


Caecus / Tacitus

by MagpieCrown



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Detailed CWs in A/N, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd-centric, Dimitri's mental health, Disability, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Minor Character Death, Probabilities Prophet Dimitri, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator, VW/AM mashup, art included, spans pre-canon to post-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:22:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 168,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27981477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieCrown/pseuds/MagpieCrown
Summary: Dimitri, Edelgard, and Claude - their shadows looming and morphing behind their backs. Before them - Byleth, a dark silhouette against a background of campfire, inscrutable, inevitable, crucial.This is important, Dimitri realizes. The vise around his chest tightens, cutting into his ribs with merciless urgency. His mouth goes dry, his face grows hot. This is very, very important.*(After Duscur, Dimitri discovers in himself the ability to see possible futures.He tries to get Byleth to lead his class.He fails.)
Relationships: Background Sylvain/Ingrid - Relationship, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 113
Kudos: 206





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome! :)  
> This is my prophetmitri au. I...don't really have a lot to say that can't be gathered from the summary+tags lol
> 
> The fic is complete and will be updated weekly as I'm finalizing some edits and/or making illustrations.
> 
> A general PSA is that, while I did choose the tag of not using archive warnings, I want reading this to be a safe experience for you guys. Which is why each chapter will contain its own warnings, and its end notes will go into more detail (with spoilers) so you can avoid things if needed. Stay safe!
> 
> Partially beta read by the wonderful [@nearlynemaria](https://twitter.com/nearlynemaria)
> 
> Feel free to hmu on twitter [@royalcrovids](https://twitter.com/royalcorvids).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter:
> 
> \- violent flashbacks to the events in Duscur  
> \- hands trauma  
> \- violent visions
> 
> The hands thing comes from my headcanon about the reason Dimitri wears gauntlets all the time: [twt link](https://twitter.com/royalcorvids/status/1279821375365165061?s=20)

_we were told that we’re alone in this world,_

_and we look up into the sky,_

_but the sky doesn't hear us,_

_the sky doesn't heed us_

“There’s not much we can do. The child’s hands might be ruined for good.”

Uncle’s pale eyes glide over Dimitri like water as he tips his head, considering Lady Cornelia’s words. 

“That will not do,” he decides eventually. “That will not do at all. Everyone knows he lived: if something were to happen now…”

_‘I am right here,’_ Dimitri thinks morosely, having neither strength nor desire to summon his voice. _‘I am right here.’_

“No one said anything about dying, my lord, though he’s certainly lucky, after all that smoke. Show me your hands, Little Prince,” Lady Cornelia turns towards him, and the endearment grinds, at odds with the hollow tone of it and the thin press of her mouth.

Dimitri pulls his bandaged limbs from under the furs, rests their unwieldy weight in his still-covered lap.

“Can you bend your fingers?”

Dimitri tries, commands his hands to obey - but nothing happens, except for a small twitch. He feels the pull of bandages where they wind themselves up to his elbows, but the hands stay mute and dead.

“No,” he says, as if it is not painfully obvious. His voice is hoarse. “Sorry.”

“Hm,” Uncle clicks his tongue against his teeth as he thinks, then looks at Lady Cornelia again. “There has to be a way around this. Something to cover it up - gloves, perhaps...”

“I might have an idea,” she drawls contemplatively. Something faint shifts in her expression, but she schools it before turning back to Uncle. “Yes, this might just work.”

*

Years into the future, Dimitri will remember the Tragedy in broader brushstrokes. The smaller details will eventually grow blurrier, paler in colour - one of the few mercies of his unreliable memory, tormented into feebleness.

Even now, a week after it happened - has it only been a week? Dimitri is not sure - there is already no consistency in his account. The images jump out at him in flashes of lightning, there and gone in an instant, the pauses in between drowning him in stiff darkness and the thunder of blood in his ears.

Dimitri remembers: sunlight smelling of salt and silt, crisp mountain air - it strokes his lungs from the inside with its cool fingers, rests sweetly on his tongue. A shout tears through the crowd, its shrill pitch a warning before the eclipse. A high, ringing note, signaling the turn of the tide - the Goddess’s gaze shifting forever away.

Then, only fire.

No, that is not true - Dimitri remembers more. He remembers what...happened as it was all beginning, as the flaming wheel groaned and shuddered and began its inescapable, crushing descent, how he…

Dimitri whimpers and buries himself deeper under the furs, away from the memory, but the stuffy, stale air that embraces him only nudges him closer to it, to the panic, and the fear, and the chaos of horses rearing, carriages toppling, people burning, burning, burning. The teetering feeling of witnessing, _knowing_ that something has gone terribly wrong and will never _ever_ be right again.

Dimitri sticks fingers into his ears, howls in his head until he can drown at least some of it out, until he reaches and passes the stretch of his memory where his terrified mind gave up on any kind of comprehension.

There was a boy - what was his name - Dedue? Dimitri must have fled the main streets, but by then it was more than just his fa-- than his people burning, and the village was going up in flames as well. He remembers dragging someone out of the scorching heat, hauling whole blazing logs away with his bare hands, the agony of them a faraway, effortlessly overshadowed sensation, easy to ignore in its straightforward simplicity. 

Yes - that was the boy. Dimitri was clutching Dedue’s hand in his own flayed and bleeding one when they were found, and somebody threatened him. Dedue was taller and broader than Dimitri, face locked in anger and fear, and they must have thought him an enemy taking Dimitri hostage. It took a lot of convincing and promises of the boy’s safety for Dimitri to slowly unclench his fingers and release Dedue’s hand, to be ushered away for healing. It was only then that Dimitri noticed that he had no control over his vise grip - nor any feeling in his hands beyond the all-consuming ocean of pain.

Dimitri wiggles up until his head pokes out from under the furs and he can breathe again. They are back in the royal palace in Fhirdiad, and he has not left his rooms since, even though it has been days already. It is a significant distance away from Duscur - normally it would take them this long just to get back, by carriage and horse, since Father dislikes Translocation magic, but now…

Dimitri suddenly feels light-headed. His room spins even as he stays lying down, curled up on his side.

_Disliked_ Translocation magic. _Disliked._

But Uncle wanted Dimitri back in the safety of Fhirdiad as soon as possible.

So. There he is.

Alive for some bizarre, inconceivable reason. When everyone else - when everyone else…

Dimitri rubs his face furiously against the pillow, trying to smother the tears, to choke them in turn. He cannot use his hands, not really: not because they hurt - they almost do not, Lady Cornelia has been making him drink one pain elixir after another - but because they still barely listen when he orders them to move, and their bandaged press against the rest of his body feels like a frightening, foreign touch. Dimitri does not want to be touched, suppresses violent shudders when nurses and healers attend to him. Everyone whose touch could soothe him right now is gone.

Dimitri lets out a whine before he can catch it. His head feels heavy and full, humming with the weight of tears and snot and the constant, constant whirl of images that spin so fast they blur into a titan, deceptively calm if not for its skin writhing with life, the way a towering wave feels solemn and slow until it crashes down and the illusion is broken in the same breath as bones.

Everything smells like burning flesh, making Dimitri retch, and he has already tried muting it with food, but no matter what he forces down his raw, convulsing throat, it tastes like nothing, does nothing to combat the stench. It is easier not to eat at all. Everything outside the paper-thin border of Dimitri’s skin feels too far away anyway.

Dimitri floats and flails and drowns in his memories: riding by Father’s side, asking him something that seemed to matter so much in that moment. Father turns his head, and his smile - the one he always wears for the crowd - thaws almost imperceptibly into something softer - and is torn in two with a crossbow bolt.

In bed, Dimitri curls further in on himself, clenches his teeth, almost feeling the smooth wooden shaft between them, bites down - as if he could break it, as if he could unwind time and take it out instead of…

In his memories, there is chaos, and the sound of many people screaming in shock, and a rider - Glenn - forces his way between Dimitri and Father, eyes wild, sword drawn as he scans the crowd, looking for the attacker - as he finds them when another bolt hits him in the armpit. He roars and rears his horse and charges, and - and - somebody swings an axe, and Dimitri sees from behind as Glenn’s head tips back, and back, and back, fragile under the weight of the helmet, leaning farther than any neck should be able to bend.

“Di...Dimitri…” Father grasps his arm, nearly yanking him out of the saddle, and the name sounds so garbled around the bolt. “Get out…” There are more bolts in him now - in his neck, his thighs, his sides, how did Dimitri not notice that? When did it happen? He only looked away for a moment...

Father’s horse panics as his blood begins to soak through the embroidered blanket, and it turns and strikes out wildly with its hind legs, one of the hooves grazing Dimitri above the knee. His own horse cries out and rears, hit in the shoulder, and Dimitri falls. Pain unfurls suddenly in the back of his head like a poisonous flower, and through the pulsing of its blade-like petals he catches sight of Stepmother’s carriage - of people dressed in black forcing it open and climbing inside.

The headache has been torturing Dimitri ever since, a constant throbbing presence that seems to keep reaching new peaks every time Dimitri dares think that it cannot possibly get any worse. The elixirs that keep his scorched hands and bruised knee mute and placid do nothing to curb it, and Dimitri has by now given up on mentioning it to Lady Cornelia. 

He dozes in his headache like a shallow pool, the burning pulse of it a weird sort of comfort. It seems to even mute his grief somewhat, detaching Dimitri from the unending flow of tears that burns and irritates his skin,leaving him instead with ample time to obsess over what happened.

The past tense does not feel appropriate - every moment, Dimitri is only a thin film away from the violent images and thick curls of smoke in his lungs. The film clings to his skin, trapping his cold sweat, offering no comfort or protection from what lies on the other side. Breaking through - diving in - is not difficult at all.

What could Dimitri have done differently? Could he have - asked Father to wait? To choose a different route? To lead the procession through a different village, down a different street? Could he have held his tongue instead of peppering him with questions, distracting him? Would the bolt have missed if Father did not turn his head to answer Dimitri?

Would he have been able to stop the other bolts if he did not get distracted by Glenn? Oh, _Glenn -_ could he have _stopped_ Glenn? Could he have - the man who had hurt him, the one with the axe - could Dimitri have gotten to him sooner, somehow?

Had he not run away - would he have - could he have protected them? Or would he have died with his family? Would he still be alone, here, would his hands still work?

But running away meant he found Dedue. Would he have died otherwise, with no one to free him from the burning ruins in time? Would he have been slaughtered too, like so many of his people, if Dimitri were not with him?

A fresh wave of guilt hits Dimitri, and he tumbles with it, the air beaten out of his lungs. He has not even thought about Dedue since arriving in Fhirdiad. Has not asked after him. He gathered from the chambermaids’ hushed gossip that Dedue had been brought to the palace, but not much else. At the very least, Dimitri’s request to spare his life was honoured. But that is not nearly enough, not by any means, not after everything that has happened to him.

Dimitri attempts to sit up, to call for a nurse, but his hand folds under him when he puts his weight on it wrong, making him fall back down. Already almost unbearable, the pain explodes in his head in a blazing fire from the impact.

The images call to him, and Dimitri falls into them, a grain of sand in a tidal wave. He can see it all so clearly now, all the things he could have done differently, all the things that could have _gone_ differently - they spin before him, faster and faster, pulling him insistently into their whirlpool, and he stumbles along, stunned and powerless and agonized, until his exhausted mind gives up and his already tenuous grasp on wakefulness slips completely.

For a week now, the line between dreams and reality has been blurred, engulfed in fire and strewn with carnage to the point where Dimitri is not truly sure where one ends and the other begins.

Not this time.

This time, he is standing in a field, bathed and drowned and buried in daylight. A gryphon is circling high up in the piercing, fractured sky, and no matter how hard Dimitri tries, he cannot make out the colour of its plumage from under the grave-like blanket of sun.

The grave closes, and Dimitri wakes up to its darkness.

Dimitri cannot stand the candles burning overnight anymore, and so it is only the soft light of embers in the fireplace that illuminates the room, pulsing in time with his headache. He lets his gaze travel across the space, up and down the muted lines of furniture, towards the drapes and over the person standing guard there…

Dimitri feels a belated surge of fear rise from his chest and fill his head, spread down into limbs in a heated wave until it dies in the hands. But he is detached from it, simply observing his body’s reaction, because the guard - the shadowy figure is...

"Glenn?" Dimitri tries, and his voice, raspy from too much crying and not enough speaking, breaks the syllable in two. He props himself up on an elbow.

The person does not nod, but smiles, tilting his head - just the way Glenn always does - _did._

Glenn is dead. He is dead, and Dimitri should be afraid, but he is not.

His head hurts so badly. He swallows hard, feels the stickiness of bile in his throat.

"You cannot be here," he tells Glenn. "You are - gone. You're a ghost."

Or he is losing his mind. 

Something ripples through Glenn's expression and posture, a whirl of wispy movements branching out from him and collecting into one again: another smile, an impatient tap of a foot, shoulders rolling back. But he is still. There must be something wrong with Dimitri’s eyes. He has not rested properly in so long.

"I'm not always gone," Glenn says, and his calm, strangely disconnected voice echoes with laughter and crying and screams. 

A stupid hope pushes up into Dimitri’s throat, despite everything, and he swallows again. Could he still be alive? Could he have been rescued after all?

“I saw it happen,” he reminds himself, even as he meets Glenn’s amber eyes. “I - your head - it was not,” Goddess, every word is a knife slice across his heart, how desperately he wishes not to be right, “it was not… You could not fix that. Nobody could.”

Glenn barks out a laugh, and weeps, and swears, and does none of those things.

“And yet, here I am,” he says instead. Spreads his arms, showing off his unmarred clothes, undented armour. Lifts his chin, the skin underneath it pink and smooth.

It feels like a taunt and a stab in the gut and the first sign of dawn after a stormy night. 

“Wait,” Dimitri blurts out, even though Glenn makes no move to leave or speak. “If you are here - if I can see you - would Felix be able to see you, too?”

Glenn shakes his head, eyes downcast. Dimitri’s heart is squeezed in his chest with the thought of Felix, robbed of his brother. The mourning of it is familiar by now, and he settles into it like an old cloak.

“Will I then…will I see my parents as well?”

Glenn tilts his head to a side, considering.

“Maybe,” he says. His eyes flash with something dark, there and gone in an instant, before Dimitri can even try to understand it. “We’ll be expecting you to fix things.”

Dimitri opens his mouth in silent confusion, but Glenn is gone - and it feels like he has not been there at all, the air where he stood just a second ago undisturbed and stale.

Dimitri lies back down, curling in on himself, the weight of grief pressing him into the furs. He weeps quietly, confused and lost; giving in to the constant buildup of tears takes no effort at all.

He wakes up at dawn, when Cina, one of the maids, slips into the room. He does not move from his stuffy nest as she quietly putters about in the adjacent bathroom, watches her blearily when she comes back out and pauses to look around, hands on her hips. 

Light begins to filter in between the half-drawn drapes, its cool hue bringing an unwelcome, squeezing sensation to Dimitri’s eyeballs. His headache rolls just behind them like a slumbering beast in its den - waking too, now. The drapes are pulled aside during the night, to allow some air in, but Dimitri has asked to keep them drawn during the day.

Seemingly remembering just that, Cina retrieves a small stepladder and places it under the window. She climbs the three steps to the top of it, head tilted back as she catches one drape and strains, trying to get the other.

She leans farther and farther, shifting her feet to the edge of the small platform, brow furrowed in concentration. A sudden creak, and her shoe slips off the edge, and with a shriek she crashes onto the stone floor with a sickening crunch of bone.

“Cina!!!” Dimitri shoots up in his bed, headache momentarily forgotten as he pushes himself towards the edge of the bed.

But Cina - Cina jumps, startled, and turns to look at him with wide eyes, lowering herself into a cautious half-crouch on top of the stepladder.

“Your Highness! You scared me to death, I didn’t know you were awake!” she breathes and straightens up. “You cried out terribly, is everything alright? Should I call Mia?”

“No, I don’t - I do not need a healer, thank you,” Dimitri replies on a reflex, his mind reeling in bewilderment. Cina was - she fell, he is sure of it - but now, why…? “Is…are _you_ alright?” he asks and searches her face, just to make sure. 

Cina laughs awkwardly; her clasped hands twitch, as if she is suppressing a gesture. “Yes, of course, Your Highness. I am perfectly fine.”

She still does not turn back to the drapes, her attention fully on Dimitri instead. He looks away, but his eyes keep darting back to the floor under the window. _What just happened?_

He hears Cina shift her feet. “I’m - gonna go find Mia, after all. Only just…” She quickly steps down from the ladder to nudge it closer to the window and gets back up to tug the drapes closed. After that, she crosses the room and pauses at the doors with a quick bow. “Your Highness.”

With that, she slips out, leaving Dimitri alone.

It must have been… He must have imagined it, surely - the way he imagined Glenn, last night? Glenn felt so real, but behaved so strangely - though that could easily be expected from a dream. What happened just now, however - Dimitri is _sure_ he is awake, so what _did_ he see?

Mia comes in and asks questions while Cina is lighting the candles and cleaning out the fireplace, but Dimitri has nothing to say to the healer, because he _is_ fine - or at least, the new definition of fine, because while his head is still splitting apart and he still cannot use his hands, none of that is out of the ordinary anymore, and he does not even begin to understand how to explain what he saw.

Mia lets out a sigh, but since she is already here, she sets to unwrapping Dimitri’s hands.

They are - a lot to take in. Dimitri is not sure if he will ever get used to the sight. Most of the surface is covered in puckered, bubbling scar tissue the colour of overripe raspberries. The few patches of surviving skin are pale divots among the raised, serrated scars. Mia turns his hands over, carefully probes around the angrier-looking spots. Dimitri does not feel her touch, of course, but it is nice that she is still so considerate. Seeing the scars makes him feel sick, but he forces himself to keep looking. He has to get used to it. They are not going anywhere.

A scar moves.

Dimitri sucks in the air, almost wrenching his hand from Mia’s loose hold. Her eyes are on him in an instant.

“Does anything hurt?”

“No.” Dimitri stares hard at his hands, and there it is again - a scar disappears, dissolving into the skin; another bubbles up in its place. The mass of them morphs across his palms and fingers like froth, like thick, spongy worms - and then Dimitri blinks, and everything is still again. The scars stretch and shine, unmoving, same as always.

Dimitri is too dazed to notice that Mia did not rewrap his hands, and by the time he thinks to ask, she and Cina are already gone, leaving him in the flickering candlelight. He rests them carefully on top of the furs, watches them from the corner of his eye, but the scars do not move again.

Later that day, Uncle and Lady Cornelia pay Dimitri another visit. A healer he is unfamiliar with comes with them and presents Dimitri with a pair of gauntlets, with gloves to fit underneath. Their polished metal gleams in the light, and they look just like Dimitri’s parade ones - at first he even thinks they are the same pair, and opens his mouth to ask why they are here. 

But then the healer places them carefully against Dimitri’s hands to check the size, and Dimitri inhales sharply as the metal brushes his scarred skin and he feels - he _feels_ , not in the regular sense of touch, but the course of magic trapped within is an unmistakable, almost physical presence, a caged element. The Crest in his blood weaves its hum in, alongside the magic.

“Ingenious, are they not?” Lady Cornelia’s smile is hard and sly. “The spell will enhance what movement you’ve retained. Put them on,” she commands sharply, and the healer nods and gets to work.

“More will be made, of course, as you grow out of these,” Uncle watches idly, thumbing his beard. “This way, you’ll never have to go without them. Nobody will ever know.”

The gauntlets fit perfectly. Dimitri jerks as the magic latches on to his hands like something eager and many-legged, shooting a tingle up to his shoulders before dissipating and settling in. Dimitri instantly feels himself begin to sweat. Can he - does it mean that…?

“Go on then, try them out,” Uncle casts about before grabbing a decorative pillow from the settee at the foot of Dimitri’s bed and tossing it at him. “Catch!”

Dimitri reaches out to grab the pillow before it can smack him in the face, fumbles with it, and eventually drops it into his lap. But! But…

“It - it works!” he exclaims, staring down at his hands. Orders his fingers to bend, and they _do_. “I can…”

He has control. He does not feel them, but he has _control._

“Now, there’s no need to get emotional,” Uncle frowns, having undoubtedly caught the hitch in Dimitri’s voice.

“Please, my lord, let the child be,” Lady Cornelia chides him, but her eyes stay firmly on Dimitri’s hands as she steps forward to take a closer look. “Wonderful. The spell is working exactly as intended.”

The scent of her perfume hits Dimitri as she leans over him to admire the gauntlets, and suddenly he sees her - she fists a hand in Uncle’s unlaced shirt, and pulls him in for a kiss, and her other hand reaches for something behind her back...

Dimitri gasps and gags at the same time; his body freezes in place before he can jolt away from the image.

“What is it, Little Prince?” Lady Cornelia’s head whips up at the sound, eyes searching his face. 

What was she - what was that?

“I - uh…” Dimitri scrambles for something to say, anything, _quickly._ “I was just - concerned about - Dedue. I have not seen him since we arrived - is he alright?”

“Dedue - who’s that?” Uncle scrunches up his face, looks to Lady Cornelia for an answer.

“The Dusca boy,” she throws off-handedly and straightens up; her expression spells disdain. “I heard he’s been healed and put to work at the stables. A pitiful sight, truly: the animals are terrified of him. What of it?”

Dimitri swallows, forces his suddenly dry throat to unstick. Dedue was so hurt, perhaps worse than Dimitri - and now he is already made to do hard work?

“I would - I would like him here, if possible,” he says, trying to scrape together as much authority as he can muster under Lady Cornelia and Uncle’s disinterested gazes.

“What on earth for? No,” Uncle scoffs immediately. “Here, in our private quarters? We can’t trust a Dusca, especially not now. He should be grateful to be alive at all.”

“Yes, we can,” Dimitri presses on with conviction. “Let him prove it! He can tend to me.” An idea strikes him, and he lifts his wobbly hands, still unused to the weight of the gauntlets. “It will take me time to get used to these. He could help me?”

Please, please let this work…

Uncle seems to consider something. He rolls his eyes, makes a show of reaching up to rub his face. “Very well. That’ll teach you caution, if nothing else.”

*

The day of the funeral is a miserable, damp thing. Early spring air is icy and piercing, and halfway into the procession it begins to hail. Dimitri keeps his hood down and his head up, feet numb in the stirrups, fingers clenched tightly around the reins. He is still the crown prince, and will hold himself accordingly, even when his entire soul feels like turning to dust - like the dark ash streaking down his face, dripping onto his clothes. 

“People will need to see you,” Uncle told him before they headed outside, the Regent’s circlet resting on top of his thinning hair, his form swathed in ultramarine velvets trimmed with black fur, his face ashed as well. “That’s how they’ll know that everything is alright. That the dynasty continues.”

Dimitri shivers on top of his pony but keeps his posture straight. Weeping, mournful faces turn towards him as he passes through the parted crowd, following the gilded hearse. There is only one casket - they never found Stepmother’s body, and something cold and fierce clenches in Dimitri’s gut at the implication, at the idea of a fate worse than death.

_Would_ she even be laid to rest next to Father? With Mother right there?

Mother’s family is following him and Uncle, he knows, great-uncles and aunties, all graceful and lithe even in their grief in a way he - King Lambert’s son, Queen Meinir’s grandson, a Blaiddyd through and through - can never hope to be. He knows they, too, are crying, without having to look back: with Father dead and him having barely survived, their links to Mother grow shakier and even more brittle.

People expect Dimitri to cry as well, he is sure, but he has run out of tears. He lets his puffy eyes rest idly on the intricate upholstery of the open carriage, on the white gryphon-lilies piled on top of it in an image of a tumulus. One of the wheels sinks for a second between the cobble stones, and a flower is shaken off the hearse. Dimitri’s mare pricks her ears at the sudden movement, but her sedate pace does not change. The lily is instantly lost amidst the other flowers carpeting the ground, thrown under the horses’ hooves by the onlookers.

*

Dimitri’s friends find him in his quarters after the excruciatingly long service at the cathedral and an even longer funeral feast in the Great Hall.

“Dima!” Felix rushes over to him from the door and takes a running leap, flinging his arms around Dimitri’s neck. He releases a wet, shuddery breath, two, three. “Da said we couldn’t see you until it was all over,” he complains into Dimitri’s shirt.

He hugs Felix back, tentatively at first, minding the gauntlets, but once his arms are around a warm body and he remembers how _good_ it feels to hug and to be hugged, he tightens his hold.

Ingrid joins in, putting her arms around their waists and squeezing her eyes shut; Dimitri feels the tense muscles of her jaw where she leans her cheek against his shoulder.

Sylvain pauses two steps away, his pose carefully unobtrusive, eyes darting around their group but never landing on them, water repelled by oil. 

Dimitri looks at him and - and suddenly, Sylvain’s lips are blue, and his cheeks are the horrible hue of frostbite, and he finally glances back at Dimitri, but his eyes are glassy and dull.

Dimitri blinks, shakes his head, careful not to knock into anyone; his arms tighten around Felix’s ribs. Something about Sylvain feels - as if he should not really be here. As if he is…ephemeral, somehow. A spectre rather than a living person. Which is ridiculous - obviously he is _here,_ and yet Dimitri cannot shake off the quiet note of dread.

He reaches towards Sylvain with a hand that is not trapped between Felix and Ingrid. Holds it out before he can think, heeding the unexpected but fierce pull, the desire to push against the funeral black of Sylvain’s coat and not have his hand pass straight through.

“Are you alright?” he asks, getting a mouthful of Felix’s unruly hair. 

Sylvain resolutely avoided looking at him, but now his eyes snap to Dimitri’s.

“Uh - yeah?” he raises an eyebrow and looks pointedly at the three of them, huddled around the same ghost. “No need to worry about me, Your Highness.”

“Come here already,” Felix grumbles, his head not moving from its spot under Dimitri’s chin.

Dimitri’s hand is still held out to Sylvain, and after a moment of consideration, Sylvain shrugs and lets himself be pulled in.

Tea is brought in soon after they finally break apart, and the four of them settle around the low table, with Sylvain and Ingrid sharing a sofa and Felix and Dimitri crammed into one armchair. The palace lives on beyond the closed doors, servants going about their chores while the nobles are drinking their weight in the name of the dead, and the hurried, busy footsteps stand out against the silence that hangs in the room and mingles with the steam from untouched cups.

And Dimitri thought he had cried his fill by now, but the presence of his friends, their attention, their shared _awareness_ feels like sandpaper against the tender planes of his wounds, making him feel exposed as they reopen and bleed. The air is leaving the punctured day with every breath that pulls Dimitri further away from those who have stopped breathing in Duscur. Soon, there will be no air left at all.

“I wasn’t sure we’d make it here in time,” Sylvain takes the plunge when it becomes clear that nobody else dares to. “The roads are _so_ bad, and uh…”

_‘And then also the Miklan horseshit,’_ Sylvain adds in a quiet voice, and Dimitri is immediately alert: he never talks about his brother.

“Miklan?” he repeats.

“What?” Sylvain leans back a fraction, as if the name itself repels him as it hangs in the air. Frost crawls along the ends of his hair. “What about Miklan?”

“Oh - I thought you - never mind.”

Sylvain eyes Dimitri with suspicion, but then Ingrid chimes in with a story of her own trip from Galatea, and the topic is dropped as readily as a rotten carcass found in the woods.

It happens several more times as they talk, when whatever they say is followed with these - echoes of words they do _not_ say. 

“...That’s why I couldn’t fly her here. But my father said the wing should be alright by the time we get back, and she is supposed to foal by the end of the Harpstring Moon anyway, so she shouldn’t be flying at all until after,” Ingrid explains, twirling the end of her braid around her fingers as she stares at nothing in particular. The skin of her nostrils is chapped and raw. _‘You should come visit then,’_ she does not say, and there is a phantom clink of her cup on the saucer when she does not reach for it.

Her clothes are dirt-stained and soaking wet, and there are twigs in her tangled hair and a burning, desperate sort of determination, and she throws the bronze clasp of her cloak into the boggy soil and runs, and runs, and runs.

Felix tucks himself tighter into Dimitri’s side, his folded knees almost in Dimitri’s lap. He stays silent throughout the pretense of a conversation, but the air around them bubbles with so many oddly shaped imprints of what Felix would say if only he could find the words for it. This, Dimitri understands better than anyone else: the earnest clumsiness when trying to handle words is something they have always shared.

The air vibrates with Felix’s ghostly frustration at the words’ inefficacy even as he curls himself tighter in without letting any of them out. Dimitri winds an arm around his shoulders, smiles inwardly at Felix’s surprised huff.

A shimmer of light, and Felix’s funeral clothes shift hue into something glossier, deeper, and thin golden patterns spring from where Dimitri’s hand rests on his upper arm, and Dimitri recognizes it instantly - the dark tunic that Uncle Rodrigue wears when he is in Fhirdiad, the tunic that was supposed to become - Glenn’s.

Dimitri almost clenches his hand on reflex, but remembers himself in time - the gauntlets are still so terrifyingly new, and it would be _so easy_ to miscalculate and hurt Felix when he cannot feel the answering pressure, and so he lets his hand relax instead and carefully avoids looking at him until the tunic morphs back into a shirt and jacket of Fraldarian cut.

Nobody but Dimitri seems to notice that anything is amiss. Specters or hallucinations, they are his and his alone.

Dimitri presses the back of his free hand to his burning temple, the metal blessedly cool against his clammy skin. Might it be a result of shock? It will go away, surely, when he has a chance to rest?

But no - something tells him, as surely as the rumbly drowse of the Crest in his veins, that this is only a trickle from a dam ready to fall. 

That this is only the beginning.

Eventually, Ingrid throws a look at the window and gets up.

“Sylvain, we need to go,” she tugs on his sleeve. “We still need to settle in and everything, remember?”

“Council stuff,” Sylvain responds to Dimitri’s questioning noise. “Since your uncle’s Regent now and all. Father reckons they’ll be at it for a week or so, so we’ll probably be expected to stick around until the nine-days-after feast, too.”

“Yeah, so…” Ingrid flicks a finger under her nose in a compulsive gesture. “We’ll be here. You know.” _‘If you need anything,’_ she does not say.

“Thank you,” Dimitri allows his head to lower for a moment.

Ingrid and Sylvain shuffle awkwardly, say their goodbyes, and leave.

“What about you?” Dimitri asks when Felix makes no move to get up and follow them.

“We’re not staying,” he mumbles. “We’re just here for one night.”

“Oh.” Something tight squeezes Dimitri’s insides, and he struggles not to hunch in on himself against the blow that comes on his suddenly unprotected side.

“Yeah - father is leaving my uncle here for the council. We’re - taking Glenn back home.”

“Oh - Felix,” Dimitri reaches out, places his numb hand cautiously on top of Felix’s. “I am sorry.”

Felix is not crying. Why is he not crying? He will later - his father is going to say something that will cause him pain.

They sit in silence for a while, braced against the weight of family crypts. The spring air from the window - the drapes are pulled aside today - is a cold, solid slab of granite against Dimitri’s back.

“I’m just glad you’re alive,” Felix says eventually. He pulls his hand from under Dimitri’s and runs inquisitive fingers along the metallic knuckles. “What’s up with these? You don’t have to be at full parade anymore.”

“Oh, it’s - oh. Um,” Dimitri pulls back, wrings his hands awkwardly - Goddess, the clang of metal only makes it worse. He forces himself to still. “I got - I was wounded at Duscur, a little bit. These are just for extra protection, for now.”

Dimitri curses himself inwardly. He was never good at lying, and even worse than that when it came to Felix.

And - Felix is eerily perceptive, a lot better than Dimitri will ever be.

“Something is different,” he says, and Dimitri’s heart flutters up into his throat when he does not mention the gauntlets, and falls back down once Felix’s words catch up with him.

“What do you mean?” he swallows. Stalls, even though he does not know how it would help.

Felix spreads out his hands in a gesture of frustration, wrestling the uncooperative words in their places. “I mean - obviously, it’s…a _lot…_ all of this… Of course, _everything_ is different, but…” he lets out an exasperated noise, raises his eyes to Dimitri’s. “But _we_ don’t have to be, right? You and I?”

Dimitri swallows again, uselessly, feels the tight knot of grief press against his sternum. How can _anything_ stay the same, now, after the world turned itself inside out?

“Of course not,” he says, hoping at least to relieve Felix of his worry.

It does not help; Felix frowns in discontent, runs a hand over his face.

“Just...tell me when you’re ready, yeah? What’s inside. I need you to tell me.”

Dimitri searches his eyes. What if Felix has noticed, somehow? What if he _sees_ it even though he does not - cannot - understand _what_ he sees?

But how would he even explain it - this... _thing,_ that he has only just grazed with his fingertips? That he still cannot put a name to, cannot guess its size and limits? How would he look Felix in the eye and say that he saw Glenn, that he _spoke_ to Glenn - who is now, Dimitri knows, in the catacombs beneath the palace, the decay of his mangled body beaten back by the coolness and preserving spells?

But he knows Felix too, knows that he will keep throwing himself against the glass wall until it gives - or he does. He needs to say _something._

“Yeah,” Dimitri breathes the word out, watches it drop uselessly in the space between them.

Felix lets out a quiet, tense sigh, nods, looks away and inward.

Their tea has long gone cold by the time he speaks again.

“Can I sleep here tonight,” he says, not even bothering to make it sound like a question.

That has always been their arrangement, even though their parents tried to get them to sleep in their own chambers after they turned seven. They both ended up crying so inconsolably that the nurses’ hearts gave out despite the strict orders not to indulge them. The morning after, Father shook his head fondly and told Uncle Rodrigue that they might as well admit fighting a losing battle.

They continued rooming together after that, both in Fhirdiad and in Fraldarius, and Dimitri’s whole being _longs_ at the idea of falling asleep next to Felix at the end of this raw, deflated day, but he looks down at his gauntleted hands and knows with a hollow, quivering certainty that it will never happen again. He cannot - let Felix see him like this. Felix needs him to be alright and whole, in a world where his brother no longer lives. He does not need to see the evidence of how horribly Dimitri has misstepped that day.

“I...think it might be better if you - stay with Uncle Rodrigue,” he forces out.

Felix’s amber eyes are on him in a flash, and he looks - betrayed, like it is Dimitri’s turn to wound him now.

“What’s that supposed to - are you serious?” he blurts out, confusion spelled clearly across his face.

Dimitri forces his stiff neck into a nod. “Yes, I’m - I think I need to be alone tonight. Sorry.”

He does not think so. He does not want it.

Felix opens his mouth, clearly intending to say something else, but catches himself in time.

“Fine. Yeah,” he cringes. “I understand.”

He does not look like he understands, and Dimitri cannot blame him.

*

Once everybody settles in, Dimitri spends the remainder of the day in the company of his friends. It is awkward, again - Sylvain and Ingrid quickly pick up on the tension between him and Felix, but Felix glares at the one attempt to get him to talk about it, and it looks like nobody is inclined to pester someone on the day of a family funeral.

So instead, they sneak out into the forest on the palace grounds, stumbling through the naked undergrowth, slipping on squelching mud, and Dimitri keeps his eyes as wide open as they would go, peering into the solid wall of darkness and trying to imagine what it would feel like if he just kept going, only concerned about ramming his knees through the brambles and tugging his cloak from the insistent grasp of low branches. What it would feel like if he kept going until he could not take another step.

Hours later, Dimitri returns to his quarters soaked and alone - desperately alone. He casts one look at his bedroom, from the newly stoked fire to the readied bed, and turns around and walks back out, gripped by the childish, anguished desire to find Felix again, even though he would still be unhappy and snappish and trying to pretend he is not.

In his haste, Dimitri snaps the door handle clean off, the sharp sound of metal on wood breaking him out of his brief delirium. 

Right.

Everything is different. Of course.

Down the dimly lit hallway, a door is ajar, candlelight spilling out through the crack. Dimitri remembers it to be a storage room and, momentarily distracted, carefully fits the handle back into the splintered hole and walks over to the opened door.

Someone is inside, and even if Dimitri didn’t have the image of Dedue’s face scorched onto the inside of his skull, it would not be hard to guess who the person is - Dimitri highly doubts that there is another man of Duscur in the entire city.

“Dedue! Good evening,” he blurts out on instinct.

The room is tiny - clearly intended as nothing more than storage for cleaning supplies - and Dedue is sitting on a narrow cot crammed against the longer wall, but he startles at the sound of Dimitri’s voice and shoots up. He leaves something on the cot - a book.

“Your Highness.” He stands ramrod-straight, hands clasped behind his back, eyes trained on the ground.

Dedue looks - freshly washed, his drying hair sticking up at odd angles. He is dressed simply, in the muted colours of a servant’s attire, but the uniform does not quite fit his angular frame.

Apart from the cot, there is only a chest in the room, with a basin and a pitcher on its closed lid. Three small vulneraries are lined painstakingly next to the basin. Something ugly twists Dimitri’s insides into a knot at the sight.

Dedue stands still, obviously waiting to be spoken to, but Dimitri sees-without-seeing how he fidgets, unsure, how he frowns in discomfort and shuffles his feet.

“Do you need - anything? I’m afraid I was not here when everything was set up, I was at the funeral and…” Dimitri trails off, trying not to wince. What _farce…_

Dedue’s eyes flick up to his own and down to the ground again. “It is agreeable,” he says with clear, deliberate enunciation.

His voice is rough - like Dimitri’s still gets sometimes, from all the smoke he had inhaled. And, well, the crying.

“Even still - if there is…” again, Dimitri cannot bring himself to continue. The stiff posture, the lack of eye contact, though both obviously go against what he is used to - no doubt someone made _sure_ that a foreigner, a hostage turned stableboy turned valet, would behave properly around royalty instead of being a complete embarrassment. _As if_ Dedue would feel safe enough to ask something of him.

“You saved me.”

Belatedly, Dimitri realizes that Dedue is addressing him, and by that time Dedue has already glanced away again.

It sounds...half like he is wondering.

Dimitri never asked him if he wanted to stay at the village - and later learned that the tiny settlement had been burned to the ground anyway. He never asked Dedue if he wanted to be taken away from his family, and only later found out that there _would_ be no family for him to stay with. Not anymore.

Dimitri examines the mortifying relief, the inescapable shame. Feels them settle in his chest, thin, wiry roots weaving into his guts. They will not leave. They are his to live with, now, just like the scars.

“I am sorry,” he says anyway - a pointless, humongously inadequate sentiment. “For what happened - I am sorry.”

Dedue is silent and sullen and subdued, and for a moment Dimitri thinks of Uncle, of his obvious, vicious mistrust - would he feel threatened, now? Would he think of Dedue’s stillness as danger?

But no - no matter how hard Dimitri looks, no matter how many not-words and not-gestures spider out from Dedue, none of them are violent, none are cruel. He is angry - oh, he is so angry, and rightfully so - but he is also exhausted, and adrift, and terribly lonely. Even here, one on one, away from the guards and the soldiers - Dedue never hurts Dimitri, never even tries to.

Dimitri is suddenly very sure of it.

An idea strikes him - something they could both benefit from.

“Um - Dedue?”

“Your Highness.”

This is the second time he uses the honorific, no doubt another rule hammered into him before his move here, and Dimitri _will_ try to get him to drop it, but right now, there are more important things at stake. “Would you please...stay in my room tonight?”

Dedue’s gaze flicks behind Dimitri, then back at him, then away. _‘This is hardly appropriate,’_ he hears him say, even as Dedue presses his lips tighter together.

“It’s…It’s a big room, we will have plenty of space. It’d be better for you than staying here.”

Dimitri is tired, and lost, and they buried Father today, and he has no right to use any of that as a leverage, and so he shall not, but…

“Just for tonight. I will not ask it of you again, if you do not like it.” Something small changes in Dedue’s expression, and Dimitri latches onto the handhold. “Please.”

“Are you not afraid of me here?” Dedue speaks cautiously. “I could easily hurt you.”

Dimitri almost laughs - ironically, Uncle would agree with the sentiment. He is quick to sober up at the bitterness in Dedue’s voice, lest he misinterprets his good humour.

“I am not,” Dimitri still allows himself a small, private smile. “You - you never do.”

Dedue knits his brows in confusion.

“My Fódlani is...lacking.”

That is something well within Dimitri’s power to fix - even though it is not Dedue’s language skills that are at fault here.

“Would you like me to teach you?” he asks anyway.

Dedue studies him intently, for a moment forgetting not to look him in the eyes.

“You are - a strange person, Your Highness,” he concludes eventually.

Right, about that. “Oh - oh no, please, call me Dimitri.”

Dedue shakes his head. “Your Highness,” he repeats firmly.

Well. One step at a time.

While Dedue collects his bedding, Dimitri brings a sofa from the parlour into the bedroom - the one Sylvain and Ingrid sat on earlier - and piles it high with the furs from his own bed - he has too many anyway. Dedue’s height means that he barely fits on it, but he staunchly refuses to play along with Dimitri’s fretting.

They prepare for bed, and Dimitri shows Dedue how to unclasp and remove his gauntlets - smothering the initial spike of fear when he is rendered defenceless without their tingling guidance, _alone, with a stranger_ \- but this is just a gut reaction. It is not about Dedue, who carefully places the gauntlets on top of Dimitri’s dresser and retreats to his makeshift nest with a bow, not a single illusory silhouette shadowing his movements.

  
Dimitri blows out the candles after they both settle in, and drifts off to sleep to the soft sounds of Dedue’s breathing across the room. His last thought before he falls through is that he might be - just a little bit - _curious_ how it all turns out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some details for the CWs:
> 
> \- in Dimitri's memories of Duscur, he burns his hands while saving Dedue; Lambert gets hit with crossbow bolts in several places, starting with one through his cheeks; Glenn catches one in the armpit, and Dimitri sees from behind how someone slashes Glenn’s throat with an axe, it’s implied that his neck broke.
> 
> \- Dimitri has a hallucination of a maid falling and breaking bones; after that, there is a description of the damage done to his hands. 
> 
> \- A brief hallucination of Sylvain from when he is frozen on a mountain.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Western Rebellion, aka baby's first attempt to steer the narrative. (:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter:
> 
> \- violent/disturbing visions  
> \- suicidal thoughts  
> \- violence/gore
> 
> check the end of the chapter for more detailed (and spoilery) CWs, and stay safe <3

_because snow falls vertically upwards_

_because nothing will ever be stronger, braver, or sweeter_

_because life breaks easily into a run -_

_and we run from each other, farther and farther away_

_farther and farther_

_farther and farther and farther..._

The feeling in Dimitri’s hands eventually returns, to an extent. 

He can discern when something is warmer or colder than his skin, though not by how much. Pain subsides, returning as a thrum of ache in Dimitri’s bones when he keeps the gauntlets on for too long. Pressure registers as something vague, an idea of it rather than the sensation itself, which leads to way too many lances splintering in Dimitri’s startled hands when it feels like they are going to slip out of his seemingly loose grasp - even as the barely-there motion they have retained is amplified by the spell in the gauntlets.

Dimitri is quick to learn what must not be touched anymore: crystal dishware, lace finery, flower petals, horse noses - fragile, precious things. Asks Dedue to cut his hair short after it snags on the metal plates one too many times. Through an effort of will, he switches out his nervous habits, trading running fingers through his hair for grinding his teeth, hand-wringing for clenching his fists until he can actually feel the pressure. They are subtler, safer, more inconspicuous - a better fit for a crown prince if he _insists_ on having tics.

“Kind of sad, isn’t it,” Glenn drawls from where he lounges in one of the armchairs, languid and limp, like a cat after too much time in the sun. “Though better than tearing your hair out every time you have a fit, I suppose. Could’ve also just shaved it all off.”

Dimitri looks up at him from the book he is reading as he sits in the other armchair. Glenn grins brightly back. The tear under his chin sluggishly bleeds gunk down his chest. Dimitri averts his eyes.

“What are you reading there?” Glenn asks.

Dimitri tilts the book to show him the cover. _“‘The Hidden History of Sreng’._ Sylvain suggested it to me.”

“Ugh,” Glenn makes a face; the corner of his dry mouth splits open at the pull. “I really wish you’d do something useful instead.”

The headache has found a spot directly in the middle of Dimitri’s skull today, ridding him of even the illusory hope that he could rub at it to ease the pain. He closes his eyes slowly instead, breathes in through his mouth.

“I’m _talking_ to you.” There is an edge to Glenn’s voice now. “What have you found on Duscur?”

Dimitri winces guiltily. After his recovery, he spent hours and hours in the palace’s library every day, poring over books until his headache would take on a sheen of exhaustion rather than - whatever this is that makes him hear and see things that are not actually there. 

He continues with his research still, venturing out to the library in the Royal School of Sorcery, which is even bigger than theirs, despite Uncle’s more than obvious disapproval at his obsession. He reads anything he can find, buries himself in books and scrolls as he tries to find connections, hints, anything that would bring him closer to understanding the _reason_ for what happened in Duscur.

Dimitri pestered his history tutor too, a blind elder by the name of Mark, who kept up with his questions as much as he could until, one day, Dimitri had a new tutor. He was told that Mark had retired and gone to live with his family near Teutates. Now Tsera, his replacement, reins him in uncompromisingly every time he attempts to steer the topic of the lesson.

Uncle does not want him to focus so much on Duscur, points him towards court etiquette and knight genealogies and trade agreements instead. Tells him to stop looking into the past.

But Glenn’s voice is louder.

“Nothing,” Dimitri replies. Even without Glenn’s remarks, the idea alone of taking time to do anything but his research squeezes his insides in a cold fist of shame. “I found information on minor lords in the area provoking the people of Duscur into small confrontations - we knew that already, but…"

"Exactly," Glenn cuts him off. "We knew. That was the whole reason we went there. Have you found anything _useful?"_

"Nothing yet. Sorry.”

Glenn sneers in response. He is different, somehow, nothing like he used to be when he was alive. 

No, that is not true. He is still quick and smart and to the point, and his wit is so sharp that Dimitri can feel it slice into him… But that _is_ the difference, is it not? Glenn never aimed to wound before, not deliberately. He respected Dimitri’s wish to treat him as an equal, no more and _no less,_ but now he is quick to scathe and scald. Now his body is charred and trampled and beaten into dust - except for when it is not, when there is not a single reminder of pain in the uninterrupted lines of his face and neck and hands.

Dimitri does not ask why the wounds stay sometimes. It makes Glenn - displeased.

Dimitri concludes that this must be how Glenn is in the times when he gets to survive Duscur. He is bitter and spiteful, and while his wounds may be cleaned and stitched shut, sand crunches on his teeth every time he speaks. Or sometimes - sometimes he was not in Duscur at all, and that is when he is at his angriest, and guards his torn heart the fiercest - and Dimitri fears that if he looks just a little bit closer, he will understand why his own heart bleeds just as brokenly in response.

Father, too, growls and rages at the attackers, at the injustice they have done to the innocents that got caught in the middle of the assassination attempt. Rages further still at Stepmother’s fate, except for when she is not gone, when they are both here, when they hound Dimitri with their rallies for revenge.

Dimitri would never have imagined any of them focused on it so single-mindedly. If - if he could admit it to himself - he would say that it scares him, sometimes. 

But does Dimitri truly have a right to judge if he himself emerged on the other side of it all a different person? Someone who can…

Dimitri swallows reflexively. His mind skirts around the thought every time he summons enough courage to step closer.

Someone who can…

Dimitri evades it, thinks instead about the first day after he dreamed of Glenn. How Cina fell but then did not, how his scars writhed on the skin of his hands - they still do - how Lady Cornelia…

That is another thought he does not enjoy approaching, tries not to even look in that direction. Her and Uncle’s unabashed affection for each other baffles him as much as it did then. Dimitri reels back from it and tumbles right into the first thought.

Someone who can - see things as they could have happened. As they could be happening - as they might still, in the future. Glenn died in Duscur, but some of the times he did not, and then he drips onto Dimitri’s cushions, except for when his wounds are healed - or when they have never been there at all. When instead of Glenn…

Dimitri wrenches himself away from it. He does _not_ want to think about those times, either.

He sees so much - too much. Every day is lived tenfold, every conversation is a cacophony, every person is a constantly morphing, shifting, warping entity, turning the air around it into thick fog. Every corridor in the palace, every street in Fhirdiad teems with blurry, hazy ghosts that fade out of existence only to fade back in the next moment in some new, infinitesimally different form.

It is...disorienting. Overwhelming. It is entirely too much, and every day bleeds into the next without any real sense of relief. And every morning, Dimitri wakes up to watch his own hands fan out in an array of movements before he actually decides whether he wants to rub his eyes or stretch his arms first. A flurry of possibilities narrows down, condenses into one when a decision is made, like a deck of cards folding in on itself - like a star imploding.

Sometimes Dimitri - travels along a branch of what did not happen and is yanked roughly back into reality when the branch comes to an abrupt end. It does not happen too often, thankfully, and not for very long when it does. 

He has conversations with Dedue and realizes he was talking to thin air when the real Dedue arrives after a training session that has gone on for longer than intended, but ended on time in Dimitri’s head. 

He crouches down behind the equipment in the main training yard to feed a feral cat some scraps, convinced that he is alone, and is immediately caught by his swordsmanship tutor Eve. 

A plague stirs in the slums when he goes to talk to people on his rare day off, and he is near panic by the time the ghostly corridor of probabilities ends and he realizes that the pustules on people’s necks were not real - not in this time.

“Watch your footwork!” Eve snaps. “Dimitri - wall!”

Dimitri remembers himself, angles his body away just before he is backed into the solid stone. A sword strikes at the spot next to his head.

Glenn gives him an appreciative grin. “Still not out of the woods!” he shouts, and leaps closer, and goes for another attack.

Dimitri dances away from him, giving himself a moment to regain his bearings as he parries blow after blow, praying that he will not break _another_ sword. It is so much easier to keep a lance from snapping in the double grip, but having only one hand on a weapon never fails to make Dimitri antsy.

“Come on, fight me!” Glenn feints and comes back around with a direct stab, and Dimitri only barely manages to counter it.

“I saw that!” Eve’s voice, threatening. “No jabs!”

Glenn does not look chastised in the slightest. “Come _on,_ Dimitri, one more for the road!” He spreads his arms, cocky, brilliant. “Hit me!”

Frustration bubbles over into a flash of anger, and Dimitri rushes him without warning, throwing one blow after another, any semblance of grace or form gone from his swings.

Glenn parries until he cannot any longer, until Dimitri knocks the sword out of his hand and has him on the ground, the tip of his own blade hovering under his chin.

“There we go,” Glenn smiles up at him - softly, suddenly so softly - and pushes himself slightly forward until he is touching the sword, until the sword is - is sinking into his torn neck.

Dimitri gasps and stumbles back, the sword clattering to the ground as his heart hammers its way up his throat. This is something he will never get used to.

“Glenn,” he calls, pushes his voice through the rush of blood in his ears, “Glenn, I’m sorry, I’m…”

_“What_ did you call me,” Glenn hisses, and suddenly he is not on the ground, and the wound is gone, and the sword is back in his hand, and he is not Glenn anymore.

“Felix,” Dimitri shakes his head, trying to get his ears to stop ringing, winded from reality giving a sudden lurch. “Forgive me, I…”

“It’s fine,” Felix talks over him. Tenses his jaw as he looks away. “I don’t care.”

The greatest irony of them all. Felix is short and stiff and serious all the time now, the skin over his wounds puckered and taut where he keeps trimming himself mercilessly to fit the image of his older brother, even though he bristles as soon as anyone points out the similarities. But he does not know that Glenn is - not like that at all anymore. If Felix wants to be like him, he has to become - crueler. Has to become an avalanche where he now pretends to be a glacier.

Dimitri misses him terribly. How agonizingly odd it is, to miss someone when they are right there.

...How odd it is, to miss someone else when they talk to you constantly from beyond the Goddess’ veil.

Father, Stepmother, Glenn - their presence, their taunts - turn Dimitri’s relationship with grief into a distorted, incomprehensible dance, to which he does not know the steps. How can he be allowed to mourn them when they are right there, talking to him, growling for vengeance, like there was never any funeral, like Dimitri never had to look in the mirror and discover speckles of Father’s blood on his face? How can he _not_ mourn when he _knows_ that it truly happened?

Even now, over a year later, Dimitri is still stuck in this fog, unable to find answers for his questions - for any of his questions - and unable to be released until he does. He does not cry for them anymore, but…

But Dimitri finds himself wondering if he could somehow - tear through to them, into the times when Father and Stepmother and Glenn all live, step into the reality where the family crypt in Fhirdiad remains unfilled, where the waters of the Darida Bay in Fraldarius are unwrinkled with ashes.

It is not as frequent now, not the way it was last year, when Dimitri walked in a daze, half-expecting his every next step to be the one where he would finally fall through. He spent nights and days pondering how it would work - how he would be able to join those who were dead, in the times when they were alive. 

Often, such thoughts would guide Dimitri to his balcony, to a wall’s ledge, to the highest point of a bridge’s spine, and he would look down and wonder if this would feel like crossing the border. Often, he contemplated how much seeing them again - truly seeing, truly being with them again - would outweigh the risk of him getting it all wrong. Wondered if him feeling more dead than alive was a sign that he should try to find out.

It - did not fade entirely, over the year, far from it. But the blade lodged in his throat, pressing against his windpipe with every swallow, has dulled itself somewhat from the use. Does not drive its serrated edge in as deeply anymore, not unless a stray thought or a careless word demands Dimitri’s attention. Which is - often enough, granted.

But still.

Dimitri’s friends are there: Felix is there, and Sylvain, and Ingrid. Though he does not see them as often as he would like, it still nudges something small and warm in his deadened heart when he thinks of them - when he remembers how they are, abstractly, out there somewhere, living, breathing.

And Dedue is here, of course, his presence a tangible, undeniable reminder that even on that terrible day Dimitri managed to do something right - with a dozen stipulations, naturally, but Dedue is one of the kindest people Dimitri has the honour to know, and, selfishly, he is glad of his friendship - deeply, irrevocably grateful for it.

There is a problem, however. The demands of the dead are a lot more present - a lot more insistent - than the far-off promise to see his friends when the council is in session or the holiday season rolls around. Their ravings and howls and insults are a lot louder than Dedue’s reserved speech. Sometimes they are all Dimitri can hear. 

Sometimes, drowning in guilt for his cowardice as he steps back from the ledge, they are all he _wants_ to hear, as if it would ever be enough to placate them. As if he could ever atone, as if they are not entitled to their anger, even as it twists them into something barely recognizable.

There is a lesson hiding here, and while Dimitri has never been especially talented in learning, he makes up for it in sheer perseverance and effort. 

The ghosts - that does not feel like the right word for them, but what else is he to call them? - are subtly, insidiously, tremendously different from how they used to be on this side of the veil - except for when they are exactly the same. The living people, too, are amorphous and unstable, every one of them a private hurricane, the eye of certainty concealed by the roaring winds of probabilities. 

Dimitri has been living for some time now, and knows not to forget that there are many sides to each person - _must_ not forget, for this awareness sometimes makes up all the difference between a smile and a hidden dagger, between a nobleman’s deferential nod to the crown prince and a cold, dangerous look to their downturned eyes. He has always known that, to an extent, everyone can be safe and unsafe at the same time - the stormy currents of visions only further confirm it, only impress deeper the reminder to be always aware, always vigilant, always attentive.

Even Dedue has them, those notes of violence, of a leashed but _present_ ability to hurt. He never directs it at Dimitri - Dimitri knows, he _looked,_ for he was unable _not_ to look - and the instances of giving in to the impulse to destroy have been growing less and less frequent against Dimitri’s steady, insistent offering of kindness and trust. But Dimitri sees enough to know: in the times where Dedue will have to bring someone suffering, he will have his reasons to do so without hesitation. Dimitri can only hope that those times, too, will grow less and less probable as days go by.

Dimitri sees everything - which also means he sees nothing. The further into the future something lies, the more uncertain it is, the fainter the paths are - to reach it or to avoid it.

It is always, always, always too much, and Dimitri’s mind tries desperately to shut it out in an attempt at self-preservation. Sometimes it succeeds, and Dimitri can hold a conversation without losing the thread of it in the tangle. Sometimes it does not, and Dimitri cannot sleep, jolted into wakefulness by the distant - almost improbable, but always there, always looming - rumbling reflections of earthquakes, hurricanes, meteors falling from the sky and obliterating half the continent.

And so, every day Dimitri wakes up, and puts on his gauntlets, and wades through the day to the unrecognizable, near-silent cosmic melody of the world ending.

He is still not sure what he is supposed to do with all of this. The weight of it bows him down, muddles his mind, robs him of sleep and peace and clarity - and he does not know the reason for it.

*

_this is how it must be,_

_this is how love is killed,_

_this is how earth embraces_

_its poor murdered beasts_

Dimitri is going west.

A brewing unrest near the Adrestian border is threatening to reach the stage of open conflict, and Uncle has decided to let Dimitri quell it before that can happen. Both to showcase Fhirdiad’s strength by sending the prince - and to mock the rebels by sending a boy.

This is what he says, in any case. It is a semi-public and thus well-rehearsed speech, and Dimitri almost misses the unspoken echo of _‘if luck will have it, they’ll give us a reason to cut them all down’._

The rebels have made their camp in three villages close to the border: Crëyrglas, Llugaer, Gorsydd. Old Faerghan names - probably settled in the wake of the War of Independence. Dimitri keeps repeating them silently until they match up to the pulse of the headache nestled next to them - until they are indistinguishable from its rumble. 

Crëyrglas, Llugaer, Gorsydd. The names stand out against the flow of time - they will be important. Why? This is such a small insurgence, such small three villages amidst their flooded cranberry fields - what is going to happen there?

Dimitri rides out with three hundred men two days after Uncle gives the order. He knows he should be - apprehensive, and anxious, and agitated - and he _will_ be, once the plains of Blaiddyd and the hills of Gideon give way to the soggy wetlands around Arianrhod, once he can no longer avert his eyes from the turmoil of the visions when the looming colossus of the battle eclipses the sky - for there will almost certainly _be_ a battle, he knows that much.

But for the first half of their journey Dimitri is giddy and drunk with freedom, with the feeling of wet spring air pushing at his expanding lungs from the inside, fresher and colder than it is in the city, the endless spread of the horizon, the slowly breathing dome of the heavens. This is his very first time outside Fhirdiad since - since two years ago, and he pulls himself in and sits as straight in his saddle as ever, but even his horse starts tossing its head, as if sensing his brimming excitement and relief.

Uncle is traveling in one of the few carriages in the back of the column. Lady Cornelia _laughed_ when he invited her along, not in the least interested in a trip through the endless mud, but Uncle has somehow convinced a few of the court ladies to keep him company. 

This is Dimitri’s maiden battle, and Uncle’s intention is to stay a spectator; however, he has made it clear that he will not hesitate to step in, should Dimitri lose control of the situation. Dimitri’s recovery has mercifully spared him from participating in the suppression of Duscur - but now the time has come for him to prove himself capable.

Dedue has to stay behind: spring is the time of the pox, the kind that mothers make sure their children contract as early in their lives as possible, because that is when it is at its mildest. But apparently it does not exist north of the Gwenhwyvar Mountains, and Dedue never had it as a baby. He will be alright, of course - nobody this young has ever died from the pox, but the fever has to run its course, uncurbed by any healing unless they want to run the risk of it returning at an older age.

But - Felix is here.

Felix is here to squire for him, and he brought a company of a hundred men from Fraldarius, and every day he rides next to Dimitri, eyes vigilantly scanning the horizon.

He looks tired and drawn but packs it all up to conceal behind a stern, collected expression. But Dimitri knows him well enough to see through it - at least, he hopes he does.

They have been writing each other semi-frequently in between Felix’s visits to the capital - that is, Felix writes in his nearly illegible scrawl, words trailing halfway off in his hurry to be done with a tedious task, and Dimitri dictates his replies, for his own penmanship would be even worse if he tried to do it himself. In his studies, Dimitri has learned to take notes in a parody of a written language, consisting more of squiggles and signs rather than words, learned to assign meaning to each squiggle to save himself time and effort, but he highly doubts that Felix would appreciate his one man cipher.

Felix’s own studies have grown more time-consuming, as he is now both the only heir to House Fraldarius and the future Advisor. He never complains about it directly in the letters and never mentions it to Dimitri’s face, never alludes to the shadow he will now always have to measure himself up against, but Dimitri reads it easily between the lines as Felix grumbles about anything from reduced hours for training to his Mathematics tutor’s abhorrent habit of coughing wetly into his hand.

Their correspondence feels like a shell of a conversation, thin and bland, and not only because of Dimitri’s scribe’s invisible presence in the letters - Dimitri simply never knows how to respond to Felix’s complaints, how to keep up the pretense that neither of them knows what the real issue is. 

Issues, plural. Felix has always been incredibly perceptive. Like all Dimitri’s friends are, like Dimitri himself is, true, but where Dimitri’s perceptiveness is born from the necessity placed on him by his status and Ingrid’s - by her sex, where Sylvain is often the first one to spot a change in the room before anyone else can remember to look for it, where Dedue strikes preemptively when his suspicion rears its head - Felix notices things because he always, above all else, cherishes honesty and demands it from other people. Tears it bloodily out of them if he needs to. 

Once, Glenn told them a story that scared Felix so much that he hung from his back like a lion trying to take down a buffalo, yowling and kicking until Glenn relented and pulled out a book and showed Felix exactly where he had read the story, and confirmed that it was, indeed, just that.

Dimitri can only guess how terribly it all must grate on him now, both Dimitri’s involuntary withdrawal and the weight of a fate he did not ask for. 

At first Felix gave him space, like he promised - because Dimitri promised to come to him. But Dimitri did not - could not, and cannot still - and eventually Felix pulled back as well, mirroring Dimitri’s steps now instead of trying to chase him, offended and hurt, and the distance between them has grown sour and slimy, like dammed water after the currents have slowed and stilled.

Dimitri imagines looking at him through the turbidity, imagines reaching out towards his mirage-like silhouette. But the distance between them, even when Felix visits and they sleep in the same wing and eat at the same table, feels as incomprehensible as the three days of travel between Fhirdiad and Fraldarius and the uneven lines on paper, and just as impossible to cross.

Now, they ride next to each other, a future king and his future advisor, and the silence between them is a tangible pressure around Dimitri’s throat, and the sunlight feels cold and bleak on his face.

It is a ten days’ journey from Fhirdiad to the western border by horse - longer now that the land is waking up from winter and the rivers swell up so much that the company often has to search for new fords. Eleven days after departure, they arrive in Arianrhod.

Dimitri immediately ends up in the confusing, ambiguous position of being both Count Tiberius Rowe’s guest and a host to the three dozen Knights of Seiros from Garreg Mach, the monastery in the Oghma mountains, while Uncle is happy to leave everything to Dimitri and spend his time being fawned over by the numerous female members of the Rowe family.

“The Archbishop sends her regards, Your Highness,” the knights’ captain bows. “The Church of Seiros takes the Kingdom’s woes very seriously.”

There is a shimmer when he says that, a convergence of energies warping the air, and Dimitri is reminded, perplexingly, of watchtowers and keystones and long hair-thin chains.

“As do we all,” Count Rowe spreads his hands to gesture at the soldiers seated at the long tables in the keep’s great hall. His smile is self-satisfied and saccharine beneath the curling moustache. “Which is why I must insist, Your Highness. Like I said, my people will make a fine addition to your company, and let it never be said that Rowe stands by in idleness while the capital is doing all the work!”

That was the same thing he had proclaimed after the Tragedy, Dimitri was told. He sat in Arianrhod and sent a nominal number of men to aid Kleiman in the suppression, and pestered Fhirdiad to have his taxation be reconsidered in the light of his support until Uncle lost his patience and sent him a thoroughbred warhorse. A beautiful, expensive gift, a clear sign of appreciation and gratitude. A useless one, too, in the wetlands.

Dimitri does not think it wise to spurn the Count further - Arianrhod is a valuable stronghold, and its keeper is best kept placated. But what Rowe offers him is another hundred men, muscle-bound brawlers with wicked-looking clawed gauntlets. The rebellion does not even warrant the heavily armoured knights from the monastery - their ragtag army certainly neither needs nor deserves to be shredded to death.

After a lot of thinly-veiled negotiation over dinner, they settle on fifty mages, skilled both in black and in white magic, and as Count Rowe ardently promises Dimitri to pick out his most talented casters of Flood and Necros, Dimitri suppresses a shudder and makes a mental note to keep them at the camp and send them into the field later on recovery missions instead.

The air in the hall is humid and warm, the waves of visions splashing noisily against the walls, tangling with people’s voices, and, exhausted, Dimitri excuses himself and escapes to the outer wall of the keep, the back of his throat itchy from the astringent persimmon wine.

There is comfort in standing somewhere up high, with the wind tearing at his clothes so violently that at times Dimitri almost loses purchase on the ground. There is freedom in the buoyancy and the breathlessness, like he could step right off the edge and walk on air. It...soothes him, somehow, in a way he cannot find a name for.

But tonight, the wind is languid and warm, a swamp lapping at Dimitri’s clothes as he wades into it. Tonight, the wind brings no relief, making Dimitri _aware_ of his jittery flesh instead of ripping him out of it.

Dimitri leans heavily into the arrow opening on the low wall. He is nothing but thorns, and his skin feels too tight in river-washed clothes. Even as Arianrhod stands tall on her rocky hill amidst the wetlands, Dimitri can feel the keep sinking into the marshes under his feet.

Crëyrglas, Llugaer, Gorsydd.

Crëyrglas, Llugaer, Gorsydd.

Crëyrglas, Llugaer...

“There you are.”

Dimitri is startled into an upright position before recognition catches up to him.

“Oh! Felix…”

Felix snorts. “Relax.” He is not looking at Dimitri - has always been very particular with eye contact, but Dimitri used to be - an exception, somewhat. Not anymore. “I couldn’t stand Rowe’s yammering either.”

Dimitri is suddenly very aware of a shift of guards positioned at the curve of the wall, though it is unlikely that they hear them - with the way the wind blows, the sound will not carry. And maybe they will not care to tell on them even if it does.

Dimitri tries to be diplomatic. “He is not…” he grimaces and gives up. “Actually, yes, he is pretty bad.”

Felix lets out another dry huff of laughter and leans into the arrow opening next to Dimitri’s, on his left. “Heard that.”

With a smile, Dimitri resumes his previous position. Fields stretch out before them, melting into the muddy horizon. The moon is almost full and throws thin shafts of light through the speckled clouds. Silence descends upon them like nighttime dew, disturbed only by the sleepy calls of the knights’ wyverns from where they roost on one of the towers, covering the surface of it with their sleek bodies.

How sorrowful this is, their sad and confused dance. How he and Felix keep seeking each other out in the dark, trying blindly to nurse the wounds they can neither acknowledge nor articulate.

Dimitri’s heart aches, and he leans more of his weight onto the dark stone as it pulls him down.

Tomorrow evening, if all goes well, they should arrive at the Red Ford. There, they can make camp, and Dimitri will send a messenger to try to resolve everything peacefully. If that fails...they will try to be quick.

The thorns scratch under his skin, restless, agitating, as if calling his attention to something.

Crëyrglas, Llugaer, Gorsydd. What _is_ it about them?

“Are you afraid?”

Dimitri almost startles again - he has already forgotten about Felix’s presence. Felix is too often - not here.

The moon drapes the blanket of clouds over itself. The horizon grows darker.

“I am, a little bit,” Dimitri replies. What awaits them there? “Are you?”

“You don’t need to be,” Felix ignores his question. “It’s just barely trained militia. Easy.”

Dimitri gives him a tight nod, even if Felix cannot see him do it. Clenches his jaw. Felix is so flippant, so confident. Dimitri wishes he could have his ignorance.

Dimitri leans the side of his head against the part of the wall separating them, welcoming its cooling touch.

And maybe it is the wall between them, or the shroud of darkness, or the last stretch before the battle - or perhaps a combination of all three - that prompts Dimitri to grasp at the splinter in his chest and pull.

“I am sorry,” he begins - and suddenly does not know how to continue. His courage has only lasted him this long, it seems - some things are too dark even against the backdrop of the lightless night.

“What are you sorry for now?” Dimitri can _hear_ the frown in Felix’s voice.

That is fair - he is frustrated, himself. Dimitri adjusts his slippery grip on the splinter; blood seeps between his fingers. 

“This - your new studies. You did not ask for it.”

Dimitri could never bring himself to dictate it in a letter. Felt somehow like he had to be able to say it to Felix’s face - and look at him now.

Silence trembles, tenses - releases. Felix shifts, the sound of it creating space for his words the way he needs it to when he tries to be careful.

“I don’t - hate it,” he admits.

He shifts again, a soft rustle of wool on stone, and Dimitri waits, stunned into silence.

“I used to be - jealous of Glenn, you know.” Felix’s voice has dropped lower, a breath over the wind’s murmur. Dimitri has to strain to hear him.

He barely dares to breathe. This is the first time either of them mentions Glenn since - that unfortunate day in Fhirdiad.

“Jealous?” Dimitri manages, worrying and releasing his lip. The wall is warming up under his temple.

“Yeah - when I first learned of the tradition. _I_ wanted to be the firstborn.” Dimitri hears a soft sound, a whisper of leather over a clenched fist. “But then Glenn became so focused on his knighthood, and you and I were always - well. I thought, maybe it would all work out somehow, by the time you’d have to take the throne.” He exhales sharply through his nose. “Didn’t think it would work out like _that.”_

Dimitri sees it then, the future that lies ahead of them now. He has always perceived his duty before his country as something inevitable, something that is just _there,_ like a midday sun or a heart that keeps beating without needing a conscious thought to guide it. But with Felix by his side - with his best friend - it becomes more than duty, more than inevitability, just _more._ And this future may be tinged irreparably with loss, and bitterness, and sorrow, but it is _there,_ and if Dimitri stays smart and quick and watchful, one day it will arrive.

Because the truth is - Felix might be confused and offended and heartsick, but he is still here. They both are.

“I am glad that we are friends, Felix,” Dimitri says quietly - needing him to know. There is so much he is _unable_ to speak about, so much that hangs between them now, as thick and distracting as the fog of visions, stands as solid as this wall, but of this, Dimitri is sure. This, he can say and truly mean.

Dimitri feels a nudge: a foot bumping briefly into his ankle. “We’ll work it out,” Felix says. “Can’t run a country otherwise.”

His tone is back to its now-usual terseness, but Dimitri hears it for what it is. He smiles softly into the darkness.

They will be alright.

*

They don’t make it to the Red Ford the next day: up north, night frost might still hold the roads in its shackles, but so far south, the ground is slimy and soft. The wyverns soar lazily overhead, unencumbered; Count Rowe’s mages step lightly on the mud in their wide shoes woven from reeds, but the horses struggle to keep up the pace. Uncle had to leave the carriages and the ladies back in Arianrhod and glowers sullenly from atop a very familiar warhorse as it tries not to slip.

They still make valiant progress and set up camp next to a cranberry field, close enough to the ford that they can hear the rush of water over the rapids from which it spreads out. 

Dimitri is not an expert, but the field looks newly planted, the bushes thin and the soil tender. It will be a while yet before they mature and bear berries, but Dimitri sees it clearly: how they puff up and swell, how the berries ripen like bruises, how the bushes’ heavy bodies are flooded from the ford and the berries float up in a swirling sea and everything becomes red, red, red…

Dimitri shakes his head, regrets it immediately when it aggravates his headache. He cannot be distracted, not now.

He sends one of the knights as a messenger, but the man comes back barely an hour later.

“They will not relent,” he says, and Dimitri looks into his hardened eyes and tastes rot. 

_‘What are you not seeing?’_ a whisper reaches him, in a voice that sounds like Glenn’s.

An uncertain sense of foreboding grips Dimitri, and he paces the western edge of the camp, sifting through the visions like the villagers will sift through the cranberries when the harvest comes - and as the afternoon begins its solemn descent into evening and an unfamiliar horn sounds over the rapids, Dimitri suddenly realizes why the phantom bushes before him now stay unflooded and unharvested, their spines breaking under the weight of the overripe berries.

The rebels have decided to attack first.

Dimitri rouses his people and takes the lead, his mind darting rapidly from one thought to another as he tries to assess the situation. They are fighting tired - the soil is soft and the horses are unsteady - people are going to make mistakes - people are going to die, a lot, a lot more than necessary. The ripples of cause and effect are clear and crisp, no matter which way Dimitri attempts to steer them.

They meet in the open field.

Fighting is nothing like Dimitri imagined, nothing like the songs and the tapestries and the strategy textbooks and the clean-cut training sessions. It is ugly, and horrible, and all Dimitri can think of as he swings his lance on top of his lathered horse is that he wants it to _stop._ When he and Felix played as children, pretending to be Loog and Kyphon leading their army into battle against a powerful but ultimately defeatable foe, when they were drunk on legends and dreaming of glory, Dimitri always imagined going up against terrible mythical monsters or a faceless, cruel invader. He imagined a just war, imagined protecting and saving and offering mercy.

He did not imagine killing his own people.

Dimitri does not want to do it. But where his mind hesitates, his body falls easily into defenses and counter-attacks. His instincts have no reservations - they simply seek survival.

Dimitri waits for the battle trance to embrace him, this peculiar state of mind that he has heard about from senior soldiers, waits to disconnect from his body, but it does not come. He is splattered with someone’s viscera from a particularly vicious stab at their throat, and the blood lands heavily on his face, and Dimitri’s stomach twists into a painful, panicked knot.

They are _his_ people. He was supposed to _protect_ them. A woman falls into the mud, her stomach slashed open and her face a mask of fear, and as she dies, she twists her neck to look desperately towards the ford - towards the villages. Who is her last thought? a parent? a lover?

Goddess, what is he doing?

The trance does not come, and killing does not get easier, and Dimitri feels himself start to shake. The rebels are still numerous - outmatched if not outnumbered by his own company, but even one more dead is one too many. 

How is he supposed to see this through?

How is he supposed to _live with himself_ after he does?

The air is pushed out of Dimitri’s lungs as he launches another attack, and he hacks it out in a sob. 

What has he done?

What _can_ he do, now?

Can he end this quickly? Can he avoid any more unnecessary deaths?

Those who have already fallen will not forgive Dimitri. But those who still live… What if he could save them - from himself?

Dimitri grabs at the visions, forces them to still for at least a moment as he tries to peer closer, shakes his head as they cling and pull at the ends of his hair like sticky sprouts of fog. What can he do? What would bring this fight to a close?

The battlefield sprawls out before him, crawling with people, crawling further with every step and swing they do not take, ringing with every cry and shout they do not release from their throats. 

Where should he go? What can he do to stop this?

Dimitri closes his eyes briefly. If he presses on like he intended to - like he was told to - how does it end?

His hands are bloody, soaked up to his elbows. The reins are slippery in his fists, and the horse grunts and foams as he pushes it harder, gives chase to those who try to run. They escape across the ford to the nearest of the three villages - Gorsydd. Uncle steps in and gives the order to burn it down.

A chill runs along Dimitri’s spine. Surely Uncle would not…? Not the innocents…?

What if he does not pursue them?

The Knights of Seiros take the lead, punish the rebels - their wyverns are fast, their armour is thick. Hundreds are slaughtered, and the river sucks the blood from the puffy earth, carries disease and rot in its winding, swollen vein…

Dimitri shudders, comes back to a man brandishing an axe as he sprints towards him. Dimitri parries easily with the longer reach of his lance, swallows reflexively at the stuttered, strained resistance of steel forcing its way through leather and flesh and bone. The lance breaks in his grip, and the man falls.

What can he _do?_

What if...

Dimitri whips his head around, trying to make sense of the battle, tugs his horse this way and that, and the gelding complains at the bit pulling at his sensitive mouth. Dimitri wheezes a sigh of relief when he spots the commander, a tall, imposing woman - she keeps towards the back of her ragtag army, barking out commands, keen eyes watching over her people.

What if Dimitri takes her on? Without their commander - will they fall apart? Will they surrender? Can Dimitri spare their lives this way?

He sees it. He sees it...

“Lance!” he calls out urgently, twists in the saddle to reach behind him…

Glenn holds up a lance to him, and his smile is crooked.

“Go on, Your Highness,” he says, and Dimitri hears his teasing tone clearly over the roaring of the battle, over the excited, frantic hammering of his own heart. “You couldn’t fix what happened to us, but you can try to fix this one, right?”

“I will,” he promises, feels the shift of the muscles around his spine and how it moves up, up, towards the reassuring weight now resting in his raised hand.

There are so many people between him and her, and Dimitri cuts them all down with a single-minded focus, a desperate sort of determination, muttering half-formed apologies as he stabs and swings his way towards his goal. He does not have the time to give them all a clean death either, for the longer he lingers, the more will die, and so he presses on. There are always people in the way, fighting and shouting and pushing back as he advances, and every time Dimitri has to kill them, but he is still sorry that it has to be so. That it is them who happen to be caught in the trajectory of his lance.

Dimitri does not know if Glenn can keep up, cannot afford to look back and check. Although...is it not Felix who is supposed to be his squire? But it does not matter, not right now. Either way, his squire is a Fraldarius, and so, he is undoubtedly on Dimitri’s heels. 

He already sees the whites of the woman’s eyes when his new lance breaks as well, stuck between the plates of a rebel’s shoddy armour and twisted cruelly in his hasty attempt to tug it free. She knows he is coming, but there are still too many people between them.

Dimitri sees how it is going to go, too. She will retreat, and so will her army, and Dimitri will not chase her down quickly enough, not before they reach the river and the village, not before the knights overtake his tired horse.

He has no time.

Dimitri’s sword hisses a pointless warning as he pulls it from the scabbard. He weighs it in his hand, its perfect balance a rocking wave, and calls on his Crest - and as the golden hum spills across that wave, Dimitri draws his arm back and sends the sword flying.

It sinks into the woman’s chest to the crossguard. She staggers - grasps at the hilt with slipping fingers - sinks to the ground.

People are running at him, and Dimitri’s exhausted horse stumbles, and he slides off to face them on foot. They should not be attacking him - they should be saving their lives, now that Dimitri made sure that it is possible in the first place - but if they wish to fight him, Dimitri will indulge them.

He picks up someone else’s sword and cannot stop smiling even as he blocks and parries and launches attacks of his own, cannot stop the feeling of pure, ecstatic relief from loosening up his limbs, granting him the kind of freedom he has not felt in years. If Dimitri has this power - if he can wield it - then he will only ever use it for good. He will make things right.

The last enemy fighting him dies, and the rest - the majority who faltered when their commander has fallen - are being rounded up by Dimitri’s soldiers. 

Dimitri closes his eyes, lets his sword arm hang by his side, the tense muscles relaxing into the embrace of his success. They are alive - so many of them are still alive. He _did_ it.

Dimitri laughs, exhilarated, relieved, and then his eyes are open again and Felix is there, and the look on his bloodied face wrenches Dimitri back into _this_ reality, slams the soles of his boots into the ruptured soil. He has seen this look before, of course - concern, and worry, and even fear, but that fear has only ever been _for_ Dimitri. Now, however…

“It’s alright, Felix,” Dimitri smiles encouragingly, takes a step towards him; Felix steps back, nearly slipping from the sudden movement. “It is - I fixed it. I fixed it all.” He laughs again, cannot stop laughing, he feels so _weightless._ “It is all going to be alright.”

“What the fuck,” Felix shakes his head, slowly, eyes pinning Dimitri down, like he does not trust him to be left out of his field of vision. “What the _fuck,”_ he repeats louder.

Dimitri realizes abruptly what a sight he must be: bloody, dirty, grinning like a madman. But it is not that, it is nothing dangerous or bad, Felix does not need to be afraid.

“Felix - I knew - I figured it out, I had a plan,” words tumble out of Dimitri in a stream, buoyed by his euphoria. He is going to explain. Felix will understand.

Felix flinches away, and Dimitri remembers he is still holding someone else’s sword, swinging it around as he gestures. He glances at it quickly - rusty and dull, an unfortunate rebel’s weapon - and lets it fall into the mud.

“You enjoyed the killing,” Felix pushes the words out through his teeth one by one, bringing them forcefully into reality. “You _laughed_ \- you are _still laughing,_ what the _fuck_ is wrong with you?! Why are you still laughing?!”

“No, no no no, you don’t understand, I…” Dimitri looks around, laughs helplessly again. Why will the words not come? When he turns back to Felix, he is looking murderous. “I _had_ to do this, I had to save…”

“Don’t,” Felix cuts him off urgently. “Don’t you fucking _dare_ bring duty into this. You didn’t _have_ to laugh, you - you are fucking _sick.”_

“I was just trying to stop it!”

“You tore a man in half!” Felix takes in Dimitri’s face, slack with shock. “And laughed! Did you even notice?!”

“I,” Dimitri stammers, “I - did not.” Could he have, really? “Listen, just let me explain…”

“I don’t,” Felix interrupts him once more, “I _really_ don’t want to hear any of your attempts to reason this away. That’s insane - you are _insane.”_

“Felix,” Dimitri calls him again, and frustration begins to rise more prominently through his mirth. “I am trying to tell you, I saw a way to stop this, Glenn told me…”

He halts abruptly when Felix’s flushed face drains of all colour.

“Glenn,” he says, and his voice is a warning.

Dimitri does not heed it. He is - he is tired of avoiding the ghost between them. “Yes - he said that I could make things right for him. For all of them. That I could fix it all!” he spreads his arms, offering the battlefield to Felix. “And I am doing it! _Look!”_

Felix leaps at him, and there is a _crack_ when his fist connects with Dimitri’s face. Pain bursts in his nose, and Dimitri staggers back, and trips, and falls down with a squelch. Stunned, he lifts a hand to his nose and probes gently at it, hissing at the answering pulse.

Felix is towering over him, sharp against the dimming sky, cold and furious, and for a moment Dimitri cannot recognize him. He has - never seen Felix like this. Has he truly caused that?

“So _this_ is what you’ve been hiding from me all this time?” Felix growls. “That you are some sort of - bloodthirsty beast? Hiding behind - hiding behind my fucking _dead brother?_ Is that what this is?”

“Felix,” Dimitri gurgles; the blood from his nose spills over and into his mouth and down the back of his throat. “It’s not like that - it’s…”

“I am _such_ an idiot!” Felix is shouting now as he throws his hands up. “I stepped back, I thought - I told myself, some people _prefer_ to grieve alone, even when I wanted to- _bloody_ hell! And all this time you - what _are_ you now, even? No, don’t answer me,” he cuts the air between them in two with a firm slash of his hand as Dimitri opens his mouth. “I should’ve known to grieve you too. You died in Duscur. I don’t know,” he gestures down at Dimitri, “whatever sick animal this is.”

Dimitri grows cold as the moment presses down on him. This is not - this cannot be happening. This is not real.

Even as he knows, painfully, that it is. Even as he watches the steel in Felix shatter and be reforged into something new in a span of a breath. Something with its sharpened edge now facing Dimitri.

“I’m leaving,” Felix decides. “Don’t fucking follow me. I don’t want to know you.”

Felix walks away, and Dimitri stays sitting in the mud, winded and keeping his breath shallow, as if it would save him from the gut wound, blood mixing with the dark soil.

By the time Dimitri finds his way back to the camp in the fallen darkness, Felix is already gone. His men have not noticed yet, busy bandaging their wounds and toasting their victory.

Dimitri is checked over by a mage, congratulated by Uncle, and cheered by the company. All of it is a barely-there echo against the void by his side where Felix should be, and his eyes keep straying to it, unable to resist the terrible pull.

*

He cannot save them, in the end.

The captured rebels confess that there is something bigger than just an insurrection, but claim not to know anything - say that the commander alone held the key information and the crucial contacts. But under ‘persuasive interrogation’, as Uncle puts it, crumbs of it come out anyway, squeezed and plucked from the careful, deliberate incisions, and troops are deployed on the trails of those crumbs, and the dead pile up higher, higher still after all the rebels are executed for treason.

Dimitri never learns of any of it, is told not to worry, until they hold a banquet back in Fhirdiad and Uncle returns him his sword, the one he threw at the woman, and commends him with a wry, sickening smile for a ‘nice toss’. Dimitri sits numbly through the feast, barely daring to move, and flees the hall first chance he gets to retch noisily into a flowerpot.

He is sick with fever after that, bound to his bed for over a week, and Dedue tends to him dutifully, even as he is still pale and unsteady from his own recent recovery. He does not ask him about the battle, and Dimitri does not volunteer to speak, leaving the words to pool thickly behind his clenched teeth.

*

Felix does not want to see him.

Uncle Rodrigue visits Fhirdiad as regularly as ever, both to tend to his duties as Lord and Advisor and to check up on Dimitri. But when normally Felix would trail him like a shadow right until he would see Dimitri and seemingly grow wings with how quickly he would sprint towards him, now there is only a painfully empty space where Felix should be.

Dimitri peers into the visions until his head splits and his eyesight darkens and fails, rifles through them obsessively until he loses the ability to sleep, but there is nothing. Felix is never there, held back by his hate and disgust, repulsed by Dimitri so strongly that only Fraldarius can be far enough for him.

Dimitri thinks often of the night in Arianrhod, how they stood next to each other on the wall and he felt like there was hope for them. The memory has the texture of a dream now, bleak and unreal.

So Dimitri sifts through the visions anyway, as clumsily as ever, desperate for something, anything, to prove that Felix might still care. But he does not - and why should he? For all he knows, Dimitri is a bloodthirsty monster, ruthless and vengeful. 

Is he not right, though? Is Dimitri not ruthless? Did he not blindly accept strewing his path with massacred bodies? Did he not welcome the simplicity of his solution? Did he not _laugh?_

It might be so. It might be the ugly, sickening truth, but Dimitri is weak. He is weak, and he misses his friend, and if there could be any way for them to talk, for Dimitri to explain himself…

But Felix is never there. And when Uncle Rodrigue half-heartedly invites Dimitri to Fraldarius, his unease is so clear Dimitri feels it almost like a physical obstacle. Felix must have told him of what he had seen, and the unhappy task of steering Dimitri through his adolescence might have fallen upon Uncle Rodrigue, but by now it is quite obvious that the familial closeness they may have had in the past is hopelessly lost. So Dimitri deflects and distracts and drifts to safer topics, and the notion of a visit is never mentioned again.

But how could he still explain himself to Felix? 

Dimitri gets an idea, and spends the better part of a night composing a letter to Felix, hoping that Uncle Rodrigue could be persuaded to relay it to him against his better judgement - and so, perhaps, to vouch for Dimitri in Felix’s eyes. But the words would not come, and when they do - a pitiful, dwindling little stream of questions and apologies and confusion - Dimitri cannot even put those to paper, not in any fashion that Felix might be able to read. Dimitri’s patience snaps with the seventh quill and he cries quietly, angry and helpless, hunched over the parchment, tears mixing into the blots of ink. 

The result is…probably more honest than any words Dimitri could condense from the viscosity of his itchy, feverish blood. But Felix - the way he has made himself to be now - would not want it, would not want the weakness and the openly displayed pain.

Burning the evidence feels like giving up. Dimitri embraces it with resignation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some details for the CWs:
> 
> \- i will mention this in the future too, but basically, if you are squeamish, squint every time there is a ghost present. chances are, it's a gory one.
> 
> \- in a sparring scene, Glenn has a torn neck and Dimitri's sword sinks into it.
> 
> \- Dimitri routinely contemplates suicide, generally by jumping from high places.
> 
> \- a general warning for violence+violent visions, on par with what you would normally expect from a western rebellion scene.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The knights are useless, but we _are_ supposed to stay with them," Edelgard points out.
> 
> Claude huffs in disbelief. "Are you telling me that if we find Remire and you are offered a _bed_ and a real, _soot-free_ meal, you will say, 'thanks but no thanks, I'd rather sleep hungry on the ground, surrounded by half a dozen nasty snoring men'?"
> 
> "Are you calling yourself nasty and snoring? I am impressed by your humbleness." Dimitri cannot see Edelgard's face, only the pale specter of her hair, but he hears her smile as she speaks. "Thought I'd never see the day."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> merry crimis!!
> 
> this chapter is actually pretty mild in terms of CWs. watch out for casual gore in the visions and canon-appropriate violence in the real world.

_something that you have to know:_

_all that you’ve been searching for_

_will soon smoulder in the ashes_

_will soon rot in cool damp earth_

_“Finally_ it’s over! If I had to listen to Crusteman a second longer I’d _implode,”_ Sylvain exclaims as everyone files out of the classroom. He staggers so dramatically Dimitri half-expects him to actually fall over.

Sunlight blinds Dimitri for a moment, and he hesitates at the doors, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Dedue pauses near him, but the rest of their class - the Blue Lions, they are called here, branded by their vassalage to him - walk ahead, chattering among themselves. Dimitri gives Dedue a small self-conscious smile, and they follow. The grass yields softly under Dimitri’s boots, its give akin to that of a breathing creature, and Dimitri, discomfited, quickly steps back onto the sidewalk.

“You’re only mad because you’ve already made a fool of yourself with Professor Manuela!” Ingrid reaches up to flick at Sylvain’s shoulder and talks resolutely over his indignant sputtering. “I’d say I hope you learned that lesson, but I really know better by now.”

“Look, I _know_ what I saw, I _know_ she teaches Reason to second years!” Sylvain gestures with one hand, swinging his bag in the other. “I don’t get why we have to get dusty old Hanneman instead!”

“Flames, will you shut up already?” Felix hisses from Ingrid’s other side. “Less talking, more walking, or we’ll get stuck queueing again.” 

He grumbles something else under his breath, and Dimitri does not catch it even though he and Dedue are trailing right behind them, but the reason for his sour mood is easy to guess: Felix hates waiting. Hates idleness, and inertia, and stagnation.

“You’re right! I think they have skewers for lunch today? I had it written down somewhere…” Ingrid pulls her bag to the front and rummages inside, slowing down, until Felix groans and pulls her along by the elbow.

The spring air settles clammy and thick on Dimitri’s face, in his mouth, slides into his lungs like syrup, so unlike the damp snowy crispness of spring in Faerghus. He feels mildly sick all the time, feverish and hazy, and he does not remember ever having such a reaction to spring - but then again, he has never experienced it this far south before.

Being at the Officers Academy in Garreg Mach is...odd. Aside from Dedue, and the rare visits from Sylvain and Ingrid while the council was in session, and the offspring of various minor nobles vying for Uncle’s attention, and his wary and quick to anger bastard children from Itha, Dimitri has not spent much time around his peers. Or at all, really, between his _private_ tutoring and _private_ training sessions to cover up the fact that while he _was_ getting better at managing his gauntlets, writing was - still is - a torturous and exhausting affair, and blunted weapons still break like reeds between his fingers even without the telltale flare of his Crest if he is not frantically attentive to his movements.

So now - among hundreds of students - Dimitri feels thrown into the turbulent deep where hundreds seemingly become thousands, tens, hundreds of thousands, and with every step he wades deeper into their ghostly sea. The thrum in his head grows louder in response, more insistent, vibrates against his skin as if trying to reach out and trace the mirage, separate what is real from what is not.

Dimitri _was_ quietly, tentatively hoping that being around Ingrid and Sylvain would help, _was_ hoping - naively so - that Felix would soften overtime, that maybe it would be as simple as it used to be when they were children, when the most burning, acidic offence could be soothed and smoothed away without a trace by a kind word, a tight embrace, a good night’s sleep - but of course, he was quickly proven wrong the very first time he saw Felix at the academy. 

Felix has not forgotten what he had seen in the west, and holds his ground firmly, resolutely, jealously, and their little group suppurates from the tension between them like a wound around a splinter every time Ingrid and Sylvain try to pull Dimitri in.

“...You will _not_ get me to accept a dare where food is at stake, you _know_ that!” Ingrid whips around at Felix and holds an accusatory finger up to his face. 

Yanked out of his thoughts, Dimitri watches Felix’s profile as he bares his teeth in a leer. He does not actually mean it - Dimitri knows his genuine scowls well enough to tell the difference, has them all meticulously catalogued in cuts stretching across his soul. They may have spent years apart, but Felix was happy to provide Dimitri with a reminder the moment they met again, _is_ happy, still, to keep reminding him whenever Dimitri gets too close. This is the only way for him to make Felix happy these days, it seems.

Ingrid’s reactions bloom around her, layered over each other, dissipating into the stuffy air almost as quickly as they appear: she pokes Felix in the forehead, and stomps her feet, and pushes him away by the shoulder, and - but the rest flashes by too quickly for Dimitri to catch against the ever-shifting background of other people’s ghosts. A second passes, and the foggy outlines fade away, and she decides on a huff.

Dimitri’s eyesight goes blurry, refocuses in this odd fashion where his own memories bleed into the ghosts like vines growing insistently in the stone cracks. They are children, and Ingrid tackles Felix and they fall into the snow, tousling and screeching. They are older, and kissing - but no, that is not Felix, that is Glenn, Ingrid and Felix almost never kiss, and the yawning abyss of Duscur is always, _always_ there, which means that this is the one where Felix went with Dimitri instead. There is always only one Fraldarius son around Dimitri, never two. Sometimes neither.

In the dining hall, they get their plates of carefully piled skewers from the cooks, and after the girls sit down at their table and Dimitri finds a place as well. His gaze brushes against Felix’s, and before he can think better of it his eyebrows rise in a wordless invitation to join him.

Felix’s scowl is a sour, involuntary thing, a gut reaction of disgust, and he deliberately picks a spot as far away from Dimitri as possible. Instead, Sylvain nudges his hip with his knee as he swings a leg over the bench, talking about something excitedly to an indulgently smiling Mercedes, who already has her hands brought up for a prayer. Dimitri’s breath turns to stone and falls into his stomach at the sudden contact; he feels it burn through the fabric of his pants long after Sylvain has already moved away.

Dimitri ponders the tingle of it for the entirety of their lunch, barely noticing the texture of the meat, oblivious to the conversation around him. This is the first instance of physical contact Dimitri has had today. Yesterday - what was it? Dedue picked a piece of lint off of Dimitri’s shoulder, the touch fleeting and light. In Riding class, Professor Jeritza - a sullen man of few words - tapped Dimitri’s elbow when he got distracted, transfixed by his macabre, looming shadow, and forgot which hook held his horse’s tack. So that was two. Or three? There were two taps - should Dimitri count them separately?

The day before that, he collided with a girl from an upper class - he does not know most people well enough to say if she is in her second or third year. They both rounded a corner a bit too quickly and the impact almost knocked her to the ground. 

Dimitri reached out to steady her, stuttered out a hasty apology, and nearly ran to his room so he could tremble apart in safety, his collarbone burning where the girl has pressed her face against him in the collision, his upper arms prickling where she has thrown up her hands against the sudden obstacle. He sat on his bed and tugged on his hair, overwhelmed and precarious, until the flayed feeling subsided and he left the room on shaky legs to try and make it to class on time.

Dimitri guards the memories of these instances with possessiveness, pulls himself through the day from one tether to the next, never knowing if it will be there when he reaches for it. Sometimes there is nothing, and Dimitri falls into his bed cold and unmoored. Sometimes he is given the accidental gift of another person’s warmth, and he counts it, and stores it away, and never asks for more.

Touch is - a sensitive issue. Dimitri exists in a separate world, places a wistful, numb hand against the snowglobe wall of his status and strength. Packs himself tighter away into his uniform and gauntlets and armoured boots, leaves plenty of space on benches in class and the dining hall, stays straight-backed and amiable and politely aloof as his classmates trade hugs and nudges and jostles as easily as smiles. 

He convinces himself that it is his choice - and starts believing that he simply does not want to make anything awkward for the others, to impose, to demand where people are not allowed to refuse. Learns to find comfort in his deliberation, learns to feel satisfaction - pride, even - when he manages to cross a busy courtyard with only the air brushing the lines of his uniform. The possibility of being touched by a stranger is even more unbearable than a smothered figment of hope that a friend might want to.

Ingrid is the first to pick up on the change in Dimitri. The four of them used to sleep together as children, crawling into each other’s beds whenever they got the chance and dozing off in tangles of mussed hair and sticky hands, leaning and grabbing onto each other during their games. But everything is different now, and Ingrid notices him angling himself away from her casual approach before she even has the chance to breach his bubble. 

In return, Dimitri gets to witness as something deeply rooted and ancient rises in her, a blood memory, and Ingrid nods to herself and settles into it instantly, like she has been waiting for the moment to come. There is no spoken protocol - on the contrary, Dimitri encourages that nobody pays attention to his title - but Ingrid follows religiously the unwritten lines of it anyway and does not overstep again.

Dimitri does not know if Felix notices anything - such subtler emotions are concealed from Dimitri behind a smokescreen of Felix’s ever-present anger... Although he _has_ always been terribly observant, always knowing to peer deeper and look harder than anyone else, so it is far more likely that he just - does not care.

Sylvain still throws a casual arm around his shoulders sometimes and graces him with his smiles, ones that are gifted so easily and so easily melt away. But stale, dead water drips from the ends of his hair, and Dimitri recoils from his freezing touch, away from the piercing fragility of Sylvain being here _at all._

Mercedes is the one other person in their class who touches as readily as she breathes, and Dimitri suppresses shivers every time she places careful fingers on his upper arm as she passes by, or reaches out to touch before she speaks, always needing to make sure first that she is being listened to. 

But he and Mercedes are barely acquainted, so it is only natural that she chooses to gift her proximity to others - and especially Annette, Ser Gustave’s daughter, who in turn keeps a deliberate, guarded distance from anyone but her and, sometimes, Ashe. Ashe is small and high-strung and vigilant, eyes darting quickly over the faces and away when he passes the Knights of Seiros, but he still relaxes in the company of his peers, people who he knows are friendly and safe - and Dimitri, in his snowglobe, is not one of them.

Which leaves Dedue, and Dedue does offer Dimitri physical contact when he is forced to ask for it - when he sleeps so poorly and his hands hurt so deeply that he cannot deal with the arduous process of putting the gauntlets on in the morning by himself. But he cannot ask more of Dedue, cannot ask more than what he absolutely needs to function. Dimitri has already taken everything from him.

Dimitri finds himself filled with equal parts excitement and dread every time they have Brawling classes scheduled for the day. It is not a frequent occurrence, thankfully, and will cease entirely unless Dimitri chooses to specialize in the art - which he will not, for there is a reason a Faerghan family of soldiers forges a named lance every time a child is born - but the idea alone of nothing but physical contact as he engages with others in one match after another is - exhilarating. Terrifying. 

However, between studiously controlling his strength and trying not to get overwhelmed, afterwards Dimitri is often left with only the vaguest impression of a passed lesson and the overstimulated, anxious buzz of skin touched so many times that he cannot even hope to keep count. What little sleep he gets after days like that, if any, is fitful and frail.

Being around so many people all the time, being so close to them, means drowning not only in the sea-like plurality of their casual gestures and actions and words, but also in their baser, uglier truths, like it was back in Fhirdiad, too. And Dimitri _sees_ what decisions they reach in the end, sees their milder, kinder, safer choices, sees them steer themselves towards certain futures, but it does not mean that the darker impulses and crueler outcomes ever truly fall away. 

Dimitri sees the brutality of mercenaries-turned-knights, the kind of force that cannot be switched out as easily as a suit of armour; sees the pettiness and the easy-going ruthlessness of students, the vices and urges of professors. Resolutely believes the best of them, always - for it is what they _do_ end up committing to that truly matters - but seeing the full spectrum of human capacity for violence never gets any easier. 

Neither does seeing their souls falter and trip, caught in the irresistible pull of gravity that is fate, spiraling closer and closer to their inexorable ends like insects enchanted by an oil lamp. Everyone dies - Dimitri is viscerally aware of that - but not everyone is cursed with the knowledge of just how often they graze the edge of the flames with their transparent wings.

Being around his friends - and Dimitri still counts Felix among their numbers, a soft, moot notion born of nostalgia more than almost anything else - is tenfold as difficult. Even since they - _especially_ since they, too, shatter into silhouettes as the spidery lines of their presents and futures burst into stars around them, filling Dimitri’s field of vision to the brim until they are the only thing he can see. Forcing him to watch.

Sometimes Felix is at his right side, jagged edges softened - not blunted - by the river currents of time, hair streaked with silver like arrows of fish in dark water, blades at his hip sharpened with a vigilance that does not leave him even in peace. Sometimes Sylvain grows a beard and is a flurry of smiles and quips in freshly learned Srengi, satisfied and confident; wary, haunted. Sometimes Ingrid is there too, a proud captain of the royal guard or a sullen, seething court lady, reduced to a symbol and an omen all at once. 

But sometimes Felix is not there at all, and Sylvain's blue mouth is unsmiling, and Ingrid rasps and bubbles around an arrow in her throat, and no matter how hard Dimitri looks, he cannot glimpse anything else. Dimitri staggers away then, buries fingers in his hair to tug the visions out of his head. He flees to the gardens, or out of the monastery if he has the chance. The horse is spurred on until it complains and then some, and in the ringing silence of the sky’s bottomless cup overturned above him, away from anyone he knows in their evermorphing uncertainty, Dimitri finally breathes and, briefly, thinks of nothing. 

It is scariest, perhaps, to look at Dedue. Steadfast Dedue, unwavering in his conviction, stubborn and kind and devoted - and with charred bone poking through sizzling skin, with blind, popped eyeballs, and then with something completely inhuman breaking apart the shell of him as it claws its way out, roaring and shaking the heavens. The most terrifying thing about any of that is always, always the thrice cursed loyalty burning steadily in his eyes, as long as he has them.

Sometimes - too often, and those are the moments Dimitri dreads the most - his awareness expands so much that he feels himself lifted into the air with it, floating up and up until the entire continent spreads out before him like one of the heavy leather maps Father would sometimes unroll on the desk in his study. But bigger, of course, and fuller, with the Sreng continent looming to the north and Almyra stretching all the way to the eastern sea, with dozens and dozens of the archipelago islands scattered in the ocean to the west and the Ranokian Belt spread in the south. 

And it morphs and ripples before Dimitri’s eyes as the banners rise and the borders shift and the bodies pile up higher and higher, impaling the charged air on columns of pyre smoke. Criss-crossing lines of fires and floods and famine slither like snakes, leaving the land ruined and barren.

Those visions hound Dimitri like a wolf pack, intrusive, relentless, hungry. They are not like the usual catastrophes, not like the thrum and flurry and distant thunder of earthquakes and meteors. No. Where those are but a faint tune, this is a crescendo. 

A war is coming.

Students chatter about the three-year-study unrolling ahead of them, complaining about the timetable and feeling excited about the planned social activities; seniors talk about the graduation and plans for the future; knights grumble their well-worn complaints about their missions. And Dimitri - Dimitri is stuck in the middle of it with his eyes wide open, seeing nothing but destruction, nothing but the soft, steady hopes and plans going up in flames as the continent turns violently on its axis like a flipped table, scattering the tiny figurines. 

Faerghus topples into the abyss, and Adrestia paints its shuttered grave red. Adrestia falls, and the spread of southern invasion consumes the war-ravaged land. Leicester tears itself into pieces and hand-feeds its guts to its neighbours. Fódlan caves in on itself, a dragon skull grown too brittle with constant wear, and the moss and the grass crawl over the planes of it, claim the ruined cities for their own, subtly, deceptively peaceful.

A sudden death, an intercepted letter, an arrow carried too far by the wind - and the balance changes in a whirlpool of movement, and the colours flow across the map like tempestuous tides.

His class is not going to finish the study. Frayed and fraught, Dimitri is not even sure they will make it through half of it. A war is coming, and its shadow has already fallen over the threshold, and the thunderclouds are hanging low and unhurried. 

Spring blooms hysterically, insistently, and the sky in its embrace blazes the deepest, most velvety blue - but Dimitri’s mind is smoke-filled and dark as he agonizes over the thickening shadows, over the delicate balance that saves one nation and condemns another, how upsetting that balance spells death for everyone - how his hand rests fearfully on the scales, mindful of how it all has already gone wrong once.

For this is what it all comes down to, is it not? Even if the intricacies are concealed from Dimitri, as difficult to discern as singular stalks in a flowing sea of grass, he knows the weight of what might happen, knows it the way nobody else can. Which means that the duty to steer that future, to - to _save_ everyone - is his, and his alone. Which is only fitting, as Dimitri is to ascend his throne very soon - and what better way is there to ensure the survival of his country than to lead it?

A war is coming, and Dimitri waits with his eyes trained on the horizon, trying to guess which shift in the air will herald the beginning of it.

*

Days go by, and Dimitri grows more and more untethered, and even meticulously counted touches do not ground him any longer. He sleeps poorly - poorer than he has in years, which is saying something, and his head hurts near-constantly, its pitch heightening at times to a migraine so piercing that he has no choice but to miss classes when he locks himself in his room and retches so hard that it feels like his very brain is bleeding out of his nose. 

But then he sews himself back together with crude stitches, and forces himself outside, and smiles and nods and pretends to be able to hold a conversation and follow along in class.

Dimitri floats through his studies, and takes his incomprehensible notes, and goes through the motions of training, unable to pay attention to any of it from behind the opaque curtain of pain and the crushing press of visions.

Time moves in stutters. Dimitri forgets what hour it is, misses half the day as he zones out over his books. He is so stuck trying to peer into the future that finding his way back to the present gets harder and harder. 

“Your Highness…we don’t have sword practice today,” Ingrid points out carefully, briefly calling Dimitri to the surface of his haze, and he finds himself, indeed, on the way to the training yard. “Professor Manuela moved it to tomorrow so that we wouldn’t clash with the second years, remember?”

Dimitri does not remember. 

“Oh! You are absolutely right,” he musters a smile that he hopes looks convincing. “I suppose I have grown used to it being on Mondays. But Tuesdays work too, of course.”

He vaguely remembers Tuesdays being empty in the second slot before lunch, so that should be fine, as long as he can keep this correction in mind.

“Uh, it’s…Your Highness, it’s - Thursday,” Ingrid pinches her brows in uncertain concern. “Sword practice got moved to Fridays.”

Is it...Thursday already? Dimitri frowns in confusion. They arrived at Garreg Mach in the middle of Lone Moon, to settle in and get acquainted with the monastery. Then there was orientation, and the classes began on the thirty-first of the same month - they held the New Year’s Wake at the massive cathedral - and it cannot have been much more than two weeks since - so surely it must still be the Great Tree Moon? A Thursday makes it then...sixteenth? seventeenth?

Dimitri swallows a defeated sigh. Whatever today is, it is, apparently, a Thursday. That will have to be enough for now.

“Are you...alright?” Ingrid inquires. 

This time, Dimitri suppresses a flinch. His poor grip on himself must be showing.

“It's lost its mind, what do you expect of it, a perfect grasp on reality?” Felix scoffs, his jab an inadvertent echo, and Dimitri could swear he was not there a moment ago, that this was the one where he is alone - everything is layered too closely together for him to know immediately what is true, where he is.

Dimitri ignores the immediate pull in his wretched chest, swallows the sorrow that it brings. Having Felix close and real makes Dimitri feel warm in a way that has nothing to do with spring or fevers, but it _hurts_ so much, too, and _angers_ as well.

“Yes, quite,” Dimitri remembers to reply to Ingrid and talks accidentally over her hissed scolding to Felix. “Oh - my apologies. If you would excuse me.”

He turns and flees on wooden legs, not really thinking about where he goes - realizing too late that he should have asked Ingrid what class they _do_ have today when he had the chance. Now it would be strange for him to come back straight away, so Dimitri will just have to hope that he finds the right place by sheer luck.

The constant changes in the schedule make it even harder for Dimitri to maintain a grasp on the timeline, bereft of the kind of routine he could lean on back home. It certainly does not help that there are only Professor Manuela and Professor Hanneman covering their three classes, turning it into an intricate game of juggling as they try to find balance between providing the necessary hours and not overcrowding the classrooms.

Dimitri is not sure why there are only two of them - seems to remember that there is supposed to be a designated professor for every class, but cannot bring himself to care enough to investigate why it is not so. He wades the haze, barely awake, never truly asleep, never firmly sure that what he is seeing is real.

Dedue is invaluable, of course - in everything but especially in this. Even though he does not know the true reason for Dimitri’s struggling, he helps out as much as he can, steers Dimitri in his solid, unobtrusive way, and it is not his fault that Dimitri feels smothered and suffocated all the same, every presence too close to him emanating stifling heat like a burning coal held in front of his face. 

Moreover - this is the first time since the Tragedy that Dedue has a real chance to make friends and be among his peers, and so Dimitri encourages his independence, encourages him seeking out Ashe’s company to garden or Mercedes’ to bake. Dedue has struggles of his own, of course, struggles Dimitri will never understand - _can_ never understand, so the least he can do is get out of Dedue’s way and let him find his own path, shut down the others when he witnesses their insensitivity. 

Dedue was never meant to be a fighter, was never meant to be a keeper, was never meant to be uprooted like this, and seeing him wind himself up tighter again every time he reappears by Dimitri’s side, smelling of earth and greenery and spices, only fuels Dimitri’s desire to allow him to stay farther away.

This is how Dimitri finds himself in the Black Eagles classroom, among the students led by Edelgard. He is not supposed to be here right now, it would seem - none of his classmates are present - and the students either have not noticed the intrusion yet or cannot be bothered to react, and in the brief motionless lull Dimitri finds his eyes drifting to Edelgard.

The blinding sterility of her white hair is a shock to Dimitri every time he catches sight of her. He tries not to stare, he really does, but his eyes keep darting back to Edelgard on their own. He has not seen her in years, of course she has changed and grown - has not everyone? - but there is something so disturbing and wrong about the straight lines of her locks. So Dimitri looks, and looks, and looks, until Edelgard turns, and the sway of her hair catches the light just so, but instead of growing brighter it turns into a warm wave of chestnut brown, and Edelgard is laughing soundlessly, and the iciness of her eyes melts away.

Dimitri forgets to breathe.

Edelgard catches him staring and pauses for a brief moment. He sees her shatter into reactions: a frown, a scowl, a bite, a smile, and sometimes - very, very rarely - she walks over and strikes up a conversation… But no, she settles on a raised eyebrow, a challenge and a dismissal at the same time, and turns back to her classmates.

For the second time that day, Dimitri retreats.

The next day - Dimitri is now relatively sure that it is a Friday - he is summoned to see the Archbishop. Lady Rhea greets him in the audience chamber, and Lord Seteth is there, and Dimitri feels the stirrings of all the times the little girl - Flayn, was her name? - loses the battle against her curiosity and comes out of her hiding spot in the advisory room.

Dimitri suspects that he is invited on class leader business, and is relieved that, with rare exceptions, the Blue Lions are so blessedly self-sufficient and organized. He is well aware that he is failing them, scattered as he is, so maybe this is going to be a well-deserved reprimand.

Dimitri is surprised to hear that they are waiting for Edelgard and Claude - the von Riegan heir, of the Golden Deer class - to arrive as well.

Lady Rhea and Lord Seteth engage Dimitri in small talk, vague and curt respectively, and Dimitri silently thanks his tutors for drilling the art of polite conversation into him since he could barely speak. The two - three - persons’ shadows seem to expand like meaty, shuddering lungs, filling the entire room, pressing against the walls, and Dimitri is almost definitely sure that only muscle memory is keeping him upright and talking at this point.

“Ah, there you are,” Lady Rhea breathes, and Dimitri turns in time to see Edelgard and Claude enter the chamber, accompanied by one of the knights. Louis? “Welcome. I hope you had no trouble finding your way here.”

“Not at all, thanks, nothing like a nice stroll through the grounds before a relaxing weekend,” Claude offers her a grin. 

Overwhelmingly often he follows it up with a two-fingered salute, too, but not this time. Impressive restraint.

“Is something the matter?” Edelgard asks. She looks…uneasy. Peeved. “If this is about the Archery class from Wednesday, I have already expressed my _concern_ about putting two dozen students on one range and letting them all shoot at the same time…”

Dimitri forcefully relaxes his face before it can twist at the memory. _So_ many things could have gone wrong, and he had to bear witness to all of them. It is truly a miracle that there was only one casualty, a flesh wound in von Aegir’s buttock from von Bergliez’s stray arrow.

“I assure you, that is not why I summoned you,” Lady Rhea interrupts Edelgard, cordiality dripping from her smile like phlegm. “Though your concern was duly noted. It is certainly...suboptimal that we do not have enough professors at the moment to take over your classes as they are supposed to… But I am certain that a solution will present itself _very_ soon.”

Edelgard’s glower subsides a fraction. “It’s good to know that we see eye to eye.”

“Of course,” Lady Rhea nods; the jewellery of her immaculate headdress glints as she moves. “Anyway, I am pleased to say that the three of you are invited on a small camping trip with the Knights of Seiros. It is going to take place over the weekend, so you have time to prepare.”

“Why, where are we going?” Claude cocks an eyebrow. “Is this a mission?”

Lady Rhea lets out a tinkling laugh; even that, somehow, feels slowed down and indistinct, like looking through flowing water.

“Only a mission in forging bonds, you could call it,” she says. “You are the heads of your respective classes, and ambassadors to each other, not to mention future leaders of your nations. It will do you good to spend some time together.”

Confusion tugs at Dimitri’s mind. Bonding would make sense. But a camping trip? With the knights, as well?

Something incorporeal slashes at his chest and is gone before he can react. A warning?

During his - blessedly, very brief - study of the art of interrogation and treatment of hostages and prisoners of war, Dimitri learned that people can often form close relationships after going through a traumatic experience together. And perhaps it is a cruel world where he cannot be certain that the Archbishop, of all people, would not send students into danger without warning them of it, but the ghostly cut pulses hotly across Dimitri’s chest.

Might it be that she does not know?

Is he overthinking this?

Dimitri realizes he is staring at Lady Rhea only when she meets his eyes and her smile widens, bland and pleasant. Her pale, pulpous bulk shifts heavily in the room, filling it, inexplicably, with the smell of stone dust.

“I’m sure you already know Alois,” Lord Seteth speaks up, gesturing to the knight - so _that_ is his name. “His people will be in charge of your safety while you are off the monastery grounds.”

“This will be fun!” Alois grins at the three of them, pumping his fist. “We meet tomorrow at three in the afternoon, near the entrance… Though I guess in our case it’ll be the exit! Ha-ha!”

Dimitri only barely suppresses a startled snort and meets Claude’s bewildered eyes in an odd moment of kinship. Was that supposed to be a joke?

“Wonderful,” Lady Rhea brings her hands together. “I am excited to hear how it goes.”

Edelgard is fuming when they leave the chamber. “I cannot believe this,” she huffs. “Our timetable is a mess, and the mock battle is coming up, and now we - the house leaders! - are going to waste an entire weekend gallivanting in the wild.”

“Ouch,” Claude gives her a crooked smile, steering them towards the stairs. “Didn’t know you despised our company so much you’d call it a ‘waste’. Personally, I’ve been feeling a little cooped up lately, so I don’t mind the chance to stretch. Back me up, Dimitri.”

Hypnotized by the beat of his feet hitting the steps, Dimitri takes a moment to react. “Oh, I - think it is not a terrible idea?”

“Diplomatic,” Claude approves with a nod.

Edelgard rolls her eyes. “Your attitudes are abysmal. It almost makes me feel bad for when we beat you at the Battle of the Eagle and Lion. Almost - but not quite.”

Claude readily argues with her, and Edelgard indulges in that solemn cadence, as if she is reciting a song or an incantation, and Dimitri finds himself almost swaying to the melodic rhythm.

She could lead an army like that.

She probably will.

*

"I _will_ stab you if you don't stop talking about food," Edelgard warns. There are cobwebs tangling the pale waterfall of her hair, and she combs it out with her fingers and quickly braids it as she glares at Claude.

"Look, all I said was that I was missing my meals having actual spices in them!" Claude raises his hands. "So if we do miss out on dinner back at the camp, I seriously don't think it'll be such a great loss. Dedue would agree with me."

Dimitri smiles to himself. Dedue has often voiced his lament that Faerghan cuisine left much to be desired in terms of sophistication - and while Ingrid and Sylvain and Felix have been pleasantly surprised by the cooking at Garreg Mach, Dedue remained quietly heartbroken until one of the merchants offered to try and see if spice blends from Duscur would come up anywhere. After that, Dedue threw himself into cooking at the monastery kitchens with vigour he has not shown before - and apparently Claude became the fortunate beneficiary.

"Well _I_ think that missing dinner is the least of our concerns right now. I can't believe we managed to get so lost," Edelgard shakes her head.

"Need I remind you that it was _your_ idea for us to take a stroll? Anyway - Dimitri, you've been quiet," Claude points out. He always does that - always notices when Dimitri is silent for too long. "A copper for your thoughts?"

"I was - thinking," he says, trying to come up with something. He has been numbly following them around, anxious and stiff, for the past - how long was it? "Could we try to find our way by the stars?"

The sky is clear and smooth above them, save for the welts of the tree branches. The stars look solemnly downwards.

"Nice idea," Claude commends. "Unfortunately, it won't work on such short distances, not without equipment - and I don't have any on me. Do you?"

Rejection burns acidly in Dimitri's chest. "No. Sorry."

"No big deal, Your Princeliness." Claude's voice is light - meant to soothe. "I _think_ there was supposed to be a village around here somewhere? I looked at the map before we left."

"Remire," Edelgard supplies.

"That's the one," a quick flash of a grin in the thickening dusk. "I'll count it as a win if we come across it instead of the camp."

"The knights are useless, but we _are_ supposed to stay with them," Edelgard points out.

Claude huffs in disbelief. "Are you telling me that if we find Remire and you are offered a _bed_ and a real, _soot-free_ meal _,_ you will say, 'thanks but no thanks, I'd rather sleep hungry on the ground, surrounded by half a dozen nasty snoring men'?"

"Are you calling yourself nasty and snoring? I am impressed by your humbleness." Dimitri cannot see Edelgard’s face, only the pale specter of her hair, but he hears her smile as she speaks. "Thought I'd never see the day."

"You wound me. I _would_ like to point out how I said 'half a dozen'. That does not include me or Dimitri."

Dimitri hears Edelgard's responses to that: _'How do you know Dimitri doesn't snore?' - 'How do you know_ **_you_ ** _don't snore?',_ but she must be getting too tired to banter.

"Let's just find something," she says instead. "It's all the same to me, at this point."

"Psst…Dimitri," a voice slinks in, and Dimitri knows who he will see if he looks for its source. "What are you missing?" 

The three of them pause before the thick bushes blocking their way, and as Edelgard huffs and slashes at them with her axe and Claude cheers her on, Dimitri steps inconspicuously away. 

Glenn is leaning against a tree, idle, waiting. 

"What do you mean?" Dimitri's whisper is soft, not meant to carry over the sound of Edelgard hacking away at the bushes. Glenn will hear anyway. 

"What are you not seeing?" 

"I see everything," clenched teeth, an answering flare of headache in his temples, between his eyebrows. "You know that."

"Then why are you still so _blind?"_ Glenn pushes himself away from the tree with an elbow. "It's laughable, really. Do you know what happens to Edelgard here?" 

Dimitri's grip on his lance tightens, unbidden, at the unnecessary reminder. He casts a look around, useless in the dark - except for the visions, who care little for such trivial things as light. 

Sometimes, Edelgard dies out here. Sometimes - but still too often for Dimitri's comfort. She dies while he is not watching, and the dagger that he has gifted her - a dagger she _still carries, she always carries it -_ does not save her. 

A shadow lurks within the times when she does _not_ die, but Dimitri pays it no mind, focusing on the immediate threat. He is acutely _aware_ of Edelgard's whole being as she is thrown, still living, into the sharp contrast of doom. And he may be foggy and lost, but whatever is coming for her, he will watch, he will know, he will be there, and the lance in his steady hands has a long reach.

"I know," Dimitri says. "I won't let it happen." 

"Like last time? Alright," Glenn laughs - a short, dismissive thing. "Let's see how this goes, then." 

"What was that?" Claude whirls around, alert, wide eyes peering in Dimitri's direction. 

Oh no. "I didn't - I was just…" 

Claude shushes him with a slash of his hand, and Dimitri closes his mouth with a click.

Edelgard stills too, and then they hear it: behind Dimitri's back, the sound of people crashing through the undergrowth, their angry cries, barked commands. 

Those are not the voices of the knights. 

"We gotta go," Claude calls urgently, already backing into the path cleared by Edelgard. She stands between them, shifting her grip on the axe, and Dimitri hesitates with her.

That is what usually happens here, Dimitri realizes: they are found by bandits, and not by chance or accident. They should be able to take them on - how many are there normally? not more than a dozen? rarely, two dozens? And if they do it head on, the chances of Edelgard getting ambushed are smaller - but Claude's half-cloak, grey in the darkness, disappears among the trees, and Dimitri and Edelgard share a look and take off after him. Right now, anything is more preferable to getting separated at night in the middle of the woods. 

Dimitri brings up the rear, the whole world divided into the pursuers and the pursued by the line of his shoulders - the sounds of the former ones getting closer with every hit of his feet against the ground. The headache rears, aggravated and red-hot, skewers his skull like a firebolt, but he keeps running even as it threatens to shove him off-balance. All he needs to do is keep Edelgard ahead of him. The rest is unimportant.

"I see a fire ahead!" Claude calls over his shoulder, breathless.

"Remire?" Edelgard's answering huff.

"Must be!"

Dimitri freezes so suddenly he nearly crashes to the ground, but manages to regain his unsteady footing without falling too far behind. Can they lead their pursuers there? Endanger the villagers?

Edelgard's braid has come undone and flies before him like an ephemeral bird. 

If they run to the village - what happens then?

A sound of branches snapping, and Claude's footsteps take on a drier, firmer quality. "Found a road!" he yells. "This way!"

Does Dimitri even have a chance to think?

They cannot stop and fight, now. That window has closed.

There are mercenaries right outside the village - Claude nearly runs headfirst into the one posted on the edge of their camp. There is activity around the sparse tents: they must have caused enough of a ruckus in their flight to raise alarm, and Dimitri quickly identifies the man who must be the mercenaries' leader - a sturdy, hardened man, already striding out to meet them - and rushes forward to ask for his help. Blessedly, the man agrees without hesitation.

The bandits catch up to them, and the fight breaks out, and Dimitri is caught in its current, his lungs seizing at the reminder of his last battle. A man slides, twitching, off of his lance, and Dimitri clenches his jaws as bile rises up his throat. Goddess, will it ever get easier? Does he _want_ it to?

Dimitri is quickly recognized as a noble and seemingly taken for an easy target - suddenly he is swarmed by so many people at once that all he can do is brandish his lance, praying that it will not break, and killing - and killing - and killing - until there is nobody left to kill, and he turns in time to watch as Edelgard gets hit by an axe in the chest.

"No!" Dimitri starts towards her and trips over his leaden feet, landing heavily on his knees, and when he looks again - almost too afraid to look, but he cannot bear _not_ to - Edelgard is…alright.

She is standing, posture locked in a defensive position - with the dagger, _the dagger is in her hand_ \- and one of the mercenaries is in front of her, and the axe is buried in _their_ back.

Something tears in Dimitri, the acute sense of loss - the sharper, still, sense of wrongness. _He_ should have been there, it should have been _him..._

The air twists itself into a convoluted shape before it smoothes out without a trace again, the bleary shimmer of one reality falling into another - and the mercenary's back is to Edelgard, and the sword in their hands rings as the bandit is knocked back.

Edelgard is safe, and the mercenary is safe - this seems to matter very much, why? - and something solidifies in place, molten mountain blood freezing in shapes as hard as stone, but Dimitri is too elated that Edelgard is alright to examine any of this. She is _alive_. He could not save her, but he did not pay for it, nobody did. For once, everything is alright.

Dimitri walks up to Edelgard, and for the briefest of moments she wavers and catches his elbow for support. Dimitri's lips part, but before he can even think to say anything, she releases him and straightens up. The memory of her fingers burns through his sweat-damp tunic.

"Everyone alright? Edelgard?" Claude jogs up to them, anxious but whole. 

His quiver is still mostly full, Dimitri notices. Which is probably wise: the risk of hitting the wrong person in the dark would be too high.

"I'm fine. He didn't get me," Edelgard turns to the mercenary, who has stooped by a fallen bandit to tug an arrow out of her armpit. "You have my gratitude."

They straighten up and inspect the arrow before offering it to Claude. "No problem," they respond. Then, to Claude, "Nice shot."

Something twists in Dimitri's stomach at the casual praise. He is reminded of Uncle, although the sheer practicality feels so different from his taunt. He hangs in between, unsure how to feel.

"What _have_ you kids forgotten here?"

Dimitri startles: he has not noticed the leader arrive.

"We got lost - and ambushed," he says, stepping to the front of their small group. "I assure you, it was not our intention to disturb anyone's peace. My companions and I are deeply grateful for your help."

Dimitri bows without thinking. Father scoffs in disbelief, somewhere behind his back.

The man does not give any indication that he has heard Dimitri as he looks at the three of them, his brow furrowed.

"These uniforms…" he pauses and shakes his head. “Where are my manners. I'm Jeralt, and my kid here is Byleth.”

The unassuming mercenary who saved Edelgard is still here, cloaked in shadows, dark, silent and still, and Dimitri focuses his attention on them. The name rings in his head - _Byleth, Byleth…_ Has he heard it before? 

Or will it become relevant later?

A flash of hair, pale, draconian; hands settling a ring of metal on his bowed head, yielding the weight of it to him in a simple gesture that somehow feels momentous; a many-toothed sword, the serpentine slash of it biting into his side, stalling.

Dimitri keeps his mouth shut, trapping a gasp within. The power of it, the sheer mass of what he glimpses, lands on his shoulders like a sheet of cold rain.

He chances a glance to either side. Edelgard is studying Byleth, and when he blinks, she is wearing a crown of horns. Blood-red fabric billows behind her and gets tattered into something corrupted, malicious, reaching for her shoulders with hundreds of ghostly hands as she snarls and fights, righteous in her fury, glorious in her victory.

Claude’s eyes are calculating, curious, cold above a charming smile. The air around him ripples with white scales, and Dimitri tastes sand and pine ground between his teeth, sees a hidden, locked chest and an empty throne. Secrets blooming and furling again in the cacophony of events they bring with them, like flowers in the everchanging shade. 

The three of them, their shadows looming and morphing behind their backs. Before them - Byleth, a dark silhouette against a background of campfire, inscrutable, inevitable, crucial.

This is important, Dimitri realizes. The vise around his chest tightens, cutting into his ribs with merciless urgency. His mouth goes dry, his face grows hot. This is very, very important. 

Byleth lifts a hand to absent-mindedly tug down a cuff, and the gesture - he has seen it - he _will_ see it - long coat sleeves passing through the air, a calm, firm voice echoing from the old stone walls and a domed ceiling, a length of parchment before him…

Something writhes beyond his field of vision, beyond the classroom, beyond the moment, something big, but he knows: Byleth is coming with them to Garreg Mach. Byleth is going to teach a class. Beyond that - what?

A crown on his head or a sword in his flesh?

The shadows behind their backs grow thicker. His head is suddenly pierced with a red-hot needlepoint of pain.

What causes what?

A war is coming, and Byleth will play a role.

“Would you- if I may speak.” Words tumble out of Dimitri’s mouth before he can stop them, tripping over themselves. Over the pounding of blood in his ears, he vaguely registers Claude making a surprised noise. “Your skill as a mercenary - if you would be so inclined as to switch to a more, uh, structured line of work - I am sure that you would be a valuable asset, that is, addition, _advantage_ to the Kingdom’s knights…”

“Whoa, let me stop His Princeliness right there, before he runs out of alliterations,” Claude slides in, and his smile is amused. Patronizing. He continues talking to Byleth, but the words wash over Dimitri, nonsensical.

On his other side, Edelgard lets out a quiet scoff. Dimitri closes his mouth, mortified. ‘A _more structured_ line of work’? What in heavens was he _thinking?_ Why has he suddenly completely lost his ability to string together a few words?

Edelgard speaks up, and Byleth’s gaze travels through Dimitri on its way from Claude to her, pausing for the briefest of moments as they frown at him. Something twists Dimitri’s stomach into a cold knot.

A crowd of people, their faces upturned in the blinding sunlight, cheering. Who do they cheer for? His hands grip the bannister. Something is sticking out of his shoulder, cold blue enamel glinting in the grooves of blackened silver. Elation, grief, gratitude, apprehension of the road ahead. Pale green eyes focused on him, content and proud.

Byleth’s gaze passes, and the sun goes out.

Dimitri feels both hot and cold, feverish, unsteady. People around him are talking now, even laughing - he is dimly aware of the knights arriving and besieging Jeralt as if he is an old friend, but it is all muted, like he is encased in a tomb of frosted glass, separated from them.

Glenn stands beside him in the tomb. There is a bandage around his neck, a dark bruise high on his brow, but he is whole.

“This is important,” he reminds Dimitri, as if Dimitri could ever forget. The patch of blood on his neck disappears, the bruise changes sides. “This is your chance to make things right. A real chance. Don’t waste it.”

Dimitri nods, clenches his fists. “I will not.”

They move their camp next to the village and hike out to Garreg Mach at dawn. The group of mercenaries comes with them - Alois drags a disgruntled Jeralt to the head of their small column - which leaves Edelgard, Claude, and himself trailing behind as rearguard. Soon enough, Byleth falls back with them as well, an idle sort of curiosity lurking in their dark eyes. 

Dimitri waits for the right moment and makes his move, formally offering Byleth a position within the ranks of the Faerghan Royal Knights - and watches, dismally, as their gaze shutters off. After a quiet word of rejection, they turn to converse with Edelgard, who regards Dimitri with a pitying smile before promptly forgetting all about him. 

Byleth’s polite refusal is smooth and bland, not a chance for a foothold, and Dimitri slips, the cheering in his ears growing fainter. Another wasted opportunity, Glenn’s warning all for naught. The sensation of falling is nauseating.

Claude claps him on the shoulder - Dimitri has not noticed the two of them falling behind Byleth and Edelgard - and offers him a sympathetic smile.

“You need to learn to relax a bit, you know that?” he says, carefree, unaware of their futures waiting to crash down on them and bury them in their own blood.

A war is coming, and Byleth will play a role, and Dimitri has failed.

He watches Byleth’s armoured back, light-headed with despair.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _'I think something terrible is going to happen at Gronder, and I am afraid.'_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for gory ghosts, particularly face/hand mutilations.

_do you know what it's like - to live with pain?_

_but of course: you are a master of combat, and I am nighttime apnea_

_with every finger you are ready both to kill and to be killed,_

_and I - with every fibre - love and long to be loved_

Somehow, Byleth is made into a professor. Lady Rhea seems to be walking on air, joyful and light, her collar framing her head like luminescent spines. Meanwhile, the entire monastery buzzes in a mix of suspicion and curiosity.

Byleth's arrival means that each class can finally have their own professor assigned. Dimitri notices Byleth stride through the monastery, looking intently at every student - evaluating, even - and hopes against all hope that there might still be a chance for them, that his friends would be able to win them over where he has failed. For some reason, this matters tremendously.

The news spreads quickly later that day: the mysterious professor has chosen the Golden Deer.

After nightfall, Dimitri lies on top of his bed, wide awake and dressed and gauntleted, and listens in his head to the faint, muted sounds of shouting and fighting; the rainfall, its torrent dampened to a murmur; the whooshing sounds of spears and arrows sent flying, the meaty _thwacks_ of them sinking into flesh. Stepmother sobs quietly in his chair by the desk, charred hands covering her face, teardrops falling onto her torn and bloodied dress.

Something is different after that, like ripples on water - like a cold undercurrent betraying a change of seasons. Every time Dimitri sees Edelgard, his headache, which is barely manageable at the best of times, gets even worse. It travels slowly around his skull like a thick, undulating parasite, before eventually settling in his right eye socket. The pain is whipped into a higher frenzy every time he blinks, but there is a slight relief in between, like a wave rolling back, and Dimitri packs all his ability to think into those gaps. 

A war is coming, and the urgency of it is slowly mounting. Its churn pulls Dimitri insistently back north, to Fhirdiad, to the safe embrace of snow and the familiar halls of the palace, to his knights and officers, to well-tasted Faerghan, to Fódlani iron-shod with its accent.

But the colours swirl on the map, and the wind rose blooms in Garreg Mach. Whatever happens, is going to happen here. Dimitri cannot leave until then.

And so he waits, and watches, and pretends to be alright.

*

Dimitri is at the monastery’s market, looking for a new sword. His old one was ruined far beyond his skill to salvage in an accident that involved a poorly fixed training dummy. It fell over when Dimitri had his back to it, startling a spasm out of his gauntleted fingers as he was wiping the sword down. Unfortunate, really, but hardly surprising with how little sleep he has been getting. 

Normally he would have it repaired, but the resident blacksmith has taken time off to tend to her sick wife - Dimitri made sure to send her a basket of food and should try to remember to do it again - and there is no one to mind the shop while she is down in the town. So the armoury it is.

Besides, though his allowance might be modest, there is little else for him to spend it on anyway.

Dimitri picks a steel sword from the rack and swings it experimentally, testing the weight and the balance. It might not be his weapon of choice, but he has more than enough knowledge and experience to make a good purchase.

Something bothers him about this sword, and with a nod to the merchant he steps away from the stall and gives the weapon a few more swings.

Maybe the balance is off, just a little bit.

As Dimitri is concentrated on the sword, it takes him a moment to notice that he is being spectated. A child is watching him from around the corner, where the produce merchant has set up his shop. The boy cannot be more than five or six, and he yanks excitedly on an older child’s clothes - ragged and dusty - until he, too, turns to look at Dimitri.

Dimitri feels his lips instinctively pull back to form a close-lipped yet friendly smile that has been drilled into him, one befitting a prince under the scrutiny of commoners. Try as he might, he cannot muster the strength to put his heart into it, but, emboldened by the false display anyway, the children slink closer.

“Do you know how to fight with a sword, sir?” the smaller one asks.

“Of course he knows,” the other one hisses, “we _saw_ him just now.”

Despite himself, Dimitri feels his smile relax into something more genuine. “I do indeed. Though it is not my preferred weapon.”

“Nah, you’re _good,”_ the older child dismisses him. Hands on his waist, he clicks his tongue against a hole where a front tooth used to be. “Can you teach us some?”

Dimitri’s eyebrows shoot up. “Teach you swordsmanship?”

“Yeah! How hard can it be?”

The visions flare out without a warning. The monastery, dropped in the middle of the continent, will not be spared - this is where the war will come knocking, and come bloodily. People in the valley will be robbed and slaughtered and left to starve - by soldiers and mercenaries and bandits alike.

Dimitri’s unfocused gaze is pulled towards the two boys. They will not be much older when the winds change. They will have to - scavenge, as they already do now, steal as they already do, scrape together enough sustenance to last another day, but an angry, hungry bandit is more dangerous - and less forgiving - than an inattentive merchant.

Dimitri swallows and looks away, squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to stave off the visions - he does not want to see the readily offered savagery that comes next.

If they could fight back, however… If he could teach them something...

"Do you honestly think you can teach them anything useful?" Father asks.

Dimitri flinches. Father steps towards the racks to inspect the weapons. "Thinking yourself a great warrior? A great leader?"

"I am not…" Dimitri's voice is barely a whisper. The children are watching him in confusion. "I only thought…"

"Tell me," Father turns around; the left half of his face is a messy, deep burn, with the cheekbone poking through above the pearls of teeth, yellow and nauseating. "How many battles have you fought? How did that go for you?"

This is not fair - Father is not fair. Dimitri clenches his fists tighter, the sides of the finger plating scraping against the sword hilt.

"Useless," Father hacks through his ruined cheek. "You are an embarrassment."

Dimitri’s face is aflame, his heart is pounding in his ears. He turns back to the urchins before he has to meet Father’s gaze again. Forces a jagged smile. "I will gladly teach you what I know."

The children whoop, their excited yells drilling into Dimitri's burning skull, and Dimitri tries his damnedest not to look in Father's direction again, not to meet his furious, disgusted eyes.

*

He teaches the orphans to fight with wooden swords - there are just the two at first, with their dusty clothes and stuffy noses, but week after week their numbers grow until a gaggle of a dozen greets him in a hoarse chorus every time he finds them after classes at their usual spot near the monastery entrance.

Professor Byleth joins them sometimes - they have spotted Dimitri hauling training swords from the grounds once and were curious enough to ask about them, and, after a moment of inspiration from Dimitri, agreed to help out. Now, Dimitri takes the weekends, and often notices Byleth striding down to the agreed place on random weekdays.

It all works out for a while. Dimitri teaches the children what he _can_ teach someone with no formal training, and pairs them up to practice, and it all goes well - if he does not count the resolute, ever-present derision in Father's twisted mouth - until one of them, a spindly boy of no older than ten by the name of Micah, knocks his partner Savva on the head hard enough to send her to the ground. Savva gets up almost immediately, dazed but undeterred, eager to continue, but Dimitri sways and has to lean against a wall as the too-strong swing of the sword tears lands with just enough force to…

"See what you have done?" Father is leaning next to him, casual, gory. "You pathetic whelp. Are you happy now?"

He has taught them. But worse than that: he has given them confidence. Enough confidence not to run in the face of danger. Enough of it to raise a wooden stick against a sharpened blade and expect to survive.

Dimitri presses a hand against his mouth as his stomach spasms. What has he done?

Father lets out a laugh, cold and cruel. "If only you would focus on what is really important. Maybe then you'd stop messing up people's lives." He lifts a hand to inspect his missing nails. "But that might be too much to ask."

"Dimitri! Dimitri," he blinks, and Micah's face swims into view. "Can you come tomorrow too? We started really late today!" he is already pouting.

Dimitri stares at the boy, at his small, mangled body, at the short but vicious tale of violence spelling itself out across it in mottled bruises.

"No," he forces the word out; straightens up to step away from the wall, but has to lean back on it again, knocking his shoulder blades against the stone.

"But _please?"_ Micah whines. Behind him, the others have stopped practicing, instantly alerted by his petulant tone, ready to join in.

"No. I..." Dimitri pushes himself away again, manages to stay upright this time.

He has done enough damage already. He cannot undo it, but at least, maybe…

Sometimes, they go up against _him,_ too, when he is here again, dirty and splintered and scarred all over. He would much rather prefer that.

"I will not teach you anymore. This is - you should stop. Please find something else to do."

The children look confused; wary. Savva is openly angry - the way she channels her frustration suddenly reminds Dimitri of Felix.

"Are you serious?" she steps up, puffing out her chest even as she reaches to rub at her head where Micah has hit her. "All because of one bump? We’ve barely learned anything!"

A whine is lodged in Dimitri's throat, the hollow pull of the empty half of an hourglass.

"You have learned enough," he says, but they do not recognize the fear in his voice. Do not recognize what he is making them into.

The children explode in a cacophony of voices at that: disbelieving, aggravated, frustrated. Someone begins to cry; someone else throws their sword against the ground, and the wooden blade splits, and the noises grow louder, and the headache wraps its iron hoop, a hot squeezing brand, around Dimitri's forehead and temples, and every sound is a nail driven deeper and deeper into his skull, piercing his brain, his eyes, his tongue, please, Goddess, just make it stop, just for a moment…

"Stop it!" he shouts - it reverberates inside his punctured skull, stoking the pain into a roaring fire. "Stop it - I made my decision!"

There is silence.

Dimitri unscrews his eyes. The children are gaping at him, a mix of surprise and fear spilled across their faces. Belatedly, he realizes that he has never yelled at them before. Never lost his composure.

His hands are shaking. He curls them into crushing, quivering fists.

Micah takes a step back.

Father is laughing - a hearty, full-throated laugh, like this is the funniest thing he has ever seen.

"Look at you," he manages to say, wipes a tear with an exposed knucklebone. "Just look at you."

Shame floods Dimitri, an icy tingling current that burns and instantly numbs his limbs, his stomach, his chest. He turns his head away, the motion slow and difficult, like forcing his way through water.

Dimitri commands his feet to move. The children are watching, still silent, as he flees. 

Byleth finds him later, while he is definitely not trying to slink away to the dormitories early. 

"The children were confused," they say, and their dark eyes are unmoving from where they are tethered to his own. 

Dimitri shifts on his feet under the weight of the unspoken question.

"My - judgement was wrong," he says. "I do not find it reasonable to teach such youth the art of warfare."

_'You had no such qualms before'_ is their not-response, blunt and silent.

"Why?" is a response that is, arguably, blunter.

Dimitri opens his mouth to answer, closes it after a tense sigh bubbles out instead.

What right do they have to question him? Have they - have they chosen his class to lead and to mentor, everything would have been different. Now, Byleth has no claim on him, and it might spell out a disastrous future, but at least he does not have to justify his mistakes to them.

Byleth narrows their eyes almost imperceptibly, and Dimitri forces himself to stay still as they scrutinise him, detaches himself from his body in a practiced way, a lizard sacrificing its tail. But even its materiality thrown up between them does not feel like enough of a barrier. What do they see?

"Very well," they say after a beat. "Perhaps we _should_ be more cautious."

Why do their eyes keep flashing the colour of chrysoprase sparks in the mother rock? Why does their hair seem to shine paler in the moment before his gaze flicks away? It cannot be the play of light reflecting off the surface of the pond. There is something more.

Byleth hums once, and nods, and seems to want to say something, but even before that intention can fill out the air, they catch sight of Hilda as she leaves the dining hall, and their eyes glint, and with a stride of a predator they stalk off without another word.

Dimitri waits by the water in case they decide to come back, but Hilda shrieks in alarm and starts explaining how she is much too busy to prepare for her certification exams, and - well. It looks like Byleth is going to be occupied for a while, and Dimitri does not hang around to find out for sure.

*

Time moves inevitably forwards. Dimitri's dreams - when he sleeps enough to dream at all - are a thunderdome. In the waking world, he glides through the air like a wraith. Even Dedue, who is used by now to his strange moods, is throwing him concerned looks, fretting in his own, quiet way.

Professor Manuela leads their class, tragically busy with a private woe but strict and thorough in her Faith Magic classes. Dimitri struggles to summon any interest or motivation for them and cannot keep his unraveling attention on the spells long enough to store them in his turbulent mind. Felix is often absent from those classes, he notices - because he is just _not there,_ or perhaps because he does not see the value in them. 

As part of their officers training, they have near-weekly missions where they go out of the monastery on short trips and command real battalions and actually kill people. It is mostly bandits spotted in the area, but sometimes they travel farther, to places of unrest along the borders, lightening the burden of the Kingdom as it waits for the heir to come of age. Dimitri counts his kills, counts the deaths among the people under his command, counts the hits the enemies manage to land on him, the stifling brands of their fingers when they get close enough to grab at him.

One day, Dimitri realizes that he has lost count. He cannot sleep for two nights in a row after that, his heart swollen and stiff and somehow still beating.

The smouldering, smothering bulk of summer crashes down on them. A revolt breaks out in the Kingdom territory - an aggrieved father avenging his son, his wound inconsolable, and the note that is discovered on his body rings false. Ashe is red-eyed and stunned for a full fortnight afterwards, only letting the girls and Dedue near, while Dimitri tries to ignore Father roaring for blood, hissing accusations of lies. 

The Verdant Rain Moon brings thunder and hailstorms, and a tower crumbles, struck by lightning, burying in its arms the broken body of Miklan Gautier. Sylvain watches the tower fall, his uniform soaked to the skin, and laughs, and laughs, and laughs, until he sinks to his knees, touches his face to the wet grass, and his laughter turns into a ragged howl.

They are not coping. Shocked and scared and suddenly very young and very alone, they are not coping, and retreat even deeper as they try to make sense of the nonsensical. Annette cleans obsessively, Mercedes can barely get out of bed, Ingrid spends all her time at the stables, Dedue pulls away from his few acquaintances and keeps to the shadows, Ashe buries himself in books. Sylvain spends night after night down in the valley, Felix overtrains to the point where Professor Manuela has to keep him in the infirmary for two whole days to mend his frayed muscles.

Dimitri watches them through his own fog, through his pale veneer of despair, unable to offer support, unable to provide a safe place, helpless and with his head full of cotton. He cannot protect anyone: their little class is tearing at the seams. And it is only going to get worse.

The monastery lives its own life, schedules classes and outings and feasts, bizarrely ordinary while they all fall apart in their private hell - bizarrely insane in a wholly different way. Byleth acquires a Hero's Relic, meant to have been wielded by Nemesis the King of Liberation himself - Dimitri catches Felix giving them an appraising, calculating look. Murmurs of a strange figure by the name of Death Knight spread through the grounds, bringing with them a feeling of horsehair, porcelain, black polished metal against skin. Flayn is abducted, and that puzzle piece falls into place; but a name hovers behind Dimitri's eyeballs, next to the headache, and he sneaks into the library every time he cannot sleep - which is often enough - and throws himself into researching Lord Arundel, Stepmother’s brother, Edelgard’s keeper. 

The research amounts to nothing, but Dimitri cannot relent: another figure lurks, intangible for now, and their outline against Lord Arundel's sharpens the contrast of him, digs deep black grooves into his whitened face. The trail is so hot it is burning the soles of Dimitri's feet as he pursues the red-tinged shadow, always just outside of his field of vision, chases it like his ghosts chase him along that same trail, maddened at the smell of blood. But even as Dimitri searches, it feels wrong. Like his angle is off, like a crucial piece is missing.

He is digging in the right place, he _knows_ that. Whoever that figure is - they are the kind that can start a war. Their name, elusive, is a burning coal in Dimitri's heat-shattered hands, and their shape prowls the edge of the shadows. Soon, they will step into the light. Soon, he will know.

Ashe's birthday on the seventeenth of the Wyvern Moon is a subdued affair: almost four moons after Lord Lonato's death, he is still disoriented and mourning, and nobody feels like celebrating, especially since the next day their three classes are to set out for the Gronder Field in the Empire territory. 

Their march is going to be packed with drills and maneuvers, and Professor Manuela has already promised a heavier load on theoretical subjects once they are back at the monastery to make up for time lost on the road. She was encouraged to stay behind and recover from her grapple with the Death Knight, and sometimes she accepts the offer and sends them out alone. Dimitri is grateful that this is not one of those times: right now, he is not fit to lead on the battlefield.

He is not fit to do much of anything, it seems.

The prospect of going to Gronder makes him feel uneasy. Dimitri does not know why: he has never been there before, has no reason to have any feelings at all on the matter. But that only means that the reason lies in the future, does it not?

He attempts to parse it and is hit with phantom volleys of spells, shaken by metal that rings against metal, splits wood, crushes bones under the too soft layer of muscle. His body feels too big, too gaunt, too tough, like broken bones fusing back together at strange angles along the fractures. Haphazard. Ill-fitting.

Or, perhaps, a body like that would best fit the way Dimitri's soul weighs.

Moments like these are when he reflexively searches for Felix among the visions around him. Even now, even in the reality where Felix abhors him so viscerally, there are still futures floating uncertainly ahead, futures where they grow up to work side by side like they thought they would what feels like a lifetime ago already. Despite how they cannot seem to stop hurting each other now, in a way, Dimitri is already used to Felix being there, the visions bridging the painful gap between the past and what is yet to come. 

Maybe because it means that someday in the future, Dimitri manages to make the right call. Manages to say the right words, do the right thing, mend their relationship - gets Felix to meet him halfway. Manages to become someone other than the bloodthirsty monster Felix seems to see in him - the monster that he sometimes feels move under his skin, as if threatening to wake up.

Sylvain has tried to talk to Dimitri about it before, very attuned, as always, to the currents of darkness shifting in the air. Tried to remind him that this is just how Felix is, since Glenn. That he does not need to take his ire so seriously.

But what could Dimitri say? Sylvain does not know the whole truth. But Dimitri sees: armed with his knowledge, Dimitri sees how kind and patient Felix can be - in his own way, of course, but he...tolerates Ashe's gushing about books. Concedes to being mothered by Mercedes sometimes, provided that she feeds him savoury pastries. Grows incredibly fond of Annette. Builds relationships with people in other classes: trains with Caspar, marvels over weapons with Claude, even starts some odd sort of rivalry with Leonie as they rope Byleth into giving them private swordplay sessions. 

Sylvain and Ingrid often wave off his grumpiness and aloofness simply as a part of his new nature, but how can that be true when he actively chooses to befriend people he does not have to spend time with otherwise?

Maybe Felix is just searching for something without the baggage. For someone who will not look at him through the prism of childhood antics and the warped mirror of Glenn, like Ingrid and Sylvain do.

Without _him_ having to look at a person and perceive an animal where a childhood friend once was.

Felix is not a bad person. Complicated, difficult, hard to understand sometimes, hard to be around sometimes - like any of them are, like every human is. But not bad. He just recognizes something evil in the bags under Dimitri's eyes, in the memories from the west, in Dimitri's fruitless attempts to carry on like nothing is amiss, and he is afraid of it, and hates it as much as he hates his dishonesty, and Dimitri cannot blame him for it. He hates this pretense just as much, but he has no other answer to the knot of grief and anxious fear tensing further and further around his neck.

But tonight, the need to see Felix - to talk to him - overpowers all reason, all warning signs to stay away, and Dimitri excuses himself from the tense company of his classmates and makes his way to the training yard under the cold twilight drizzle. He does not need to dive into the visions to know that he will find Felix there.

Sometimes, Felix does not attack him for daring to come closer. Sometimes, he allows him to be near, and to talk, and on the rarest occasions…

"Boar," Felix greets him in the yard with a sneer, heated up and damp with sweat and the feeble rain. He has been here for some time, it seems.

This is the name Felix favours for Dimitri these days. He was not told the reason for this particular choice, but can guess well enough.

"Felix," he replies. Tries not to hesitate. What will he even talk about? He has not thought past the sudden, unconquerable need to see him. "Ready for the march tomorrow?"

He aims for casual, but it lands flat. Felix huffs as he slices the air with a dulled training sword.

The technique is unfamiliar. He must have learned it from someone else.

They have grown so distant - and it is normal for friends to grow apart sometimes, to have different interests, so learn different things. But this - this is not like that, and Dimitri cannot even properly put into words, why.

How can he ever hope to close this gap?

How can he ever stop missing Felix? Has he no pride?

"Why are you here?" Felix asks, ignoring Dimitri's flimsy excuse for a question.

_'Because I…'_ The words rise to the root of his tongue, unbidden and useless. They are the truth, of course, but Dimitri never says them because they never help. They only serve to make Felix madder. To complicate things further.

_'A war is coming'_ is another truth struggling to be spoken, a refrain to his unfortunate life, but these words, too, fail to leave his lips.

_'I think something terrible is going to happen at Gronder, and I am afraid.'_

"I was hoping that we could talk," is what Dimitri finally settles on, but Felix tosses his head and strides over to the weapon racks.

“I don't want to. If you insist on being here, be useful. Spar with me,” Felix throws a blunted lance at him. Swings his sword in an arch, cutting the already unwinding thread of the stilted conversation. A mercy killing.

Dimitri’s fingers grip the weapon, whining from the times he fails to catch it. He does not enjoy sparring - too many variables, too many silhouettes blurring together, too many phantom aches, all of it making his skull threaten to split along the sutures - but this is Felix, and if this is how Dimitri gets to spend time with him, so be it.

A vicious upswing, a turn, a half-step into his range and immediately out of it - Felix’s dance would look seamless if all the other swings and turns and steps were not stuttering into each other around him, melting together and solidifying into every movement he ends up making. Dimitri blocks and parries, is prompted into counter-attacks when Felix sneers at his passiveness and lands a punishing blow to his forearm, channels his spite into every hit, takes it out on Dimitri's reluctantly offered body. 

Felix is almost constantly angry with him these days, and almost all of the times, except for when he - pauses, inexplicably, and lowers his hackles, and looks with something that could almost be mistaken for tenderness, or when he reaches for Dimitri and - but Dimitri is not sure that it is not just his wishful thinking, his guilty, shameful longing. His idiotic hope for any hint at all that they can live to see a better future before Felix sinks his teeth in too deep - before Dimitri finally lashes out bloodily in return.

Felix hisses in frustration and shakes his hand once, as if moving to throw the sword at a wall. He never does. He would not hurt what is important to him.

“I can’t bloody do this,” he turns back to Dimitri, and oh, he is angry, so angry. To be in the focus of it feels strangely exhilarating. “I can’t look at your face. You make me _sick.”_

Something clenches low in Dimitri’s gut, nauseating and sorrowful, plunging him into the deep. Not at Felix’s insults - the words themselves do not cause such hurt in him anymore - but at their implications. How did they end up here? How is _this_ the relationship they get to have? How could they allow it all to go so wrong? 

Whatever shows on Dimitri’s face makes Felix look like he wants to howl. He steps closer, knocking aside Dimitri’s hand with the lance still clutched numbly in it. Jabs a finger into Dimitri’s chest, at a spot under his collar, just to the side of the sternum, aiming between the ribs where it would hurt the most.

“You are a _beast,”_ Felix snarls. Another jab. “An animal. Stop trying to pretend you’re anything but, you don’t _fool_ me!”

Dimitri sees his hand reaching for Felix's throat, Felix's eyes reddening and bulging, his hands scrabbling helplessly at the crushing pressure...

Dimitri flinches away from him, clasps one hand tightly with the other - stiff and clammy within the gauntlets, but no crackling give of windpipe under them, nothing, nothing, safe this time.

Dimitri _knows_ that Felix cannot see what he sees - but Goddess, what if he could? Would he put him out of his misery on the spot? Eliminate him before he can hurt someone again? Would Dimitri beg him to spare his life - or to end it? Or would he fight back? Destroy him in turn?

“Stop looking so…” Felix pauses, and huffs, and spreads his arms. “Flames, I don’t know why I bothered. You’re just a useless shell. Nothing I say is going to matter.”

Then why does he keep talking? Why does he _always keep talking?_

“Will you listen to me for once?” Dimitri snaps; the shaft of the lance gives a shrill whine in his grip. “You said you had no desire to talk and then insisted on throwing these insults at me-”

“What else would you have me do?” Felix interrupts him. “Reason with beasts?”

This again. 

The anger flickers out as quickly as it flared, leaving a heavy lump in Dimitri’s twisting gut. Because the truth is - the truth is that it _does_ matter what Felix says, or maybe Dimitri, or sometimes both of them. They manage to say the right thing, and the vise loosens just a bit, lets Dimitri breathe a little easier. An it makes all the difference.

But Felix bares his teeth, silent, and stalks over to the weapons rack to put his sword down, and storms out of the yard. 

Dimitri hangs his head, shoulders tense and unmoving under the rain. Quiet, soft, mulish despair spills over the lines of him, fills up the empty yard like saltwater, hums in his ears. He stands in the middle of it, frozen, for a second just allowing himself to feel. To firmly remember this later: the moment of unexplainable knowledge that he has somehow failed a test.

*

They are defeated at Gronder. 

After everyone gets patched up and changed out of the armour and the short disputes that exploded during the battle are settled, Claude is gracious enough in his victory to invite everyone to a feast laid out on the long tables under the raised canvasses, but Dimitri cannot force himself to eat. He has put a piece of something - meat or poultry, something fibrous - in his mouth earlier and almost gagged when his throat contracted, working spasmodically around something thick piercing his neck - a sword, a spear shaft? He was not wounded during the battle, but Goddess, why does this hurt?

Someone points out his silence, his full plate, laughs and calls him a sore loser. Somebody else thumps him on a shoulder, brave and giddy from the fight - he counts it, having to start over after the chaos of the battle - and the movement jostles the array of spears protruding from his back, punching a gasp out of him. What _was_ that?

Dimitri seeks out Edelgard at her table, and she is humble in defeat, smiling and toasting the Golden Deer with her goblet, surrounded by her friends. This is wrong, too - this is _so wrong,_ why is she smiling? She is never so peaceful at Gronder, she…

Dimitri's body burns. Alarmed, he looks for Felix. He is not at their table, and Dimitri searches and searches and searches until he spots him standing next to the staff table. Byleth is straddling their bench so they can face him properly, listening to him with a solemn expression. Felix looks...frustrated, bitter. Determined.

A different kind of pain nudges at Dimitri as he watches them, but he cannot place it. Something is festering under the too-warm bandage, and there is a prideful, spiteful kind of satisfaction in not lifting it to check.

*

The students are flown back to Garreg Mach on winged mounts. The Red Wolf Moon begins. 

The strangeness of life at the monastery does not get more palatable as time goes on; if anything, it becomes even more incongruent, and Dimitri tumbles hurriedly along in its current like a leaf caught in the rapids.

He goes to classes. Fights bandits. Endures Father's abuse, Glenn's goading, Stepmother's tears. Attempts to placate them as much as he attempts to stay in this reality. Waits for the war to begin as he paces the ancient corridors, as he pores over the leather-bound books, trying to focus through the fire blazing in his head, through the visions keeping him awake most nights.

Sometimes, he gets so lost in parsing the probabilities, travels so deep down the possible paths even as every next step stays foggy and indeterminable, that he forgets he is actually surrounded by real people. Thankfully, his persona of a prince is constructed carefully enough that the myriads of cracks are only hair thin, though he _does_ feel trepidation at the one hit that will eventually shatter the mask - and the hammer has already begun its descent.

But for now, the friction between the shards holds them together, and does so well enough that most people do not notice anything wrong - and even if they do, they are liable to attribute it to stress - for who is not stressed, right now, after everything? - or to his brooding image, an ice prince from the kingdom of eternal winter, which somehow attracts and intrigues rather than repulses. Dimitri is flirted with, sometimes; pursued, even, by people seeking - what? status? a thrill? or could it be something genuine?

But Dimitri can never summon anything more than distracted pity. How could he ever reciprocate when his reputation is the reputation of his country? when he is holding onto his sanity, onto this reality, by his fingertips, hounded by the images of war? when he is so tattered that he does not know the borders of his own damaged body? when his heart…

Dimitri's thoughts stray to Felix, here. What could one call this? Is the name even important? Does the name matter when Felix's presence always makes everything feel _right_ even if they end up fighting? When his absence brings a sharp smell of a snowstorm, a seizing, guttural sensation of reality careening off a cliff?

Being aware of all the times where Felix does not get to survive is the most painful. Every time Dimitri accidentally sidesteps into the vision where Felix is gone, all he can do is try to guess when he will be able to regain his grip again.

This time, it stretches. Felix is gone, and the winter clouds are dim and mottled like old bruises. Felix is gone, and no matter how much Dimitri gnaws at himself from below, the sky hangs lower still. Felix is gone, and Glenn is scornful and frayed.

Eventually, Dimitri cannot keep it up any longer. Eventually, he gives in, even at the risk of confusing others. He needs to know - needs to know where he is. Needs reality to pop back into its swollen socket. 

"Have you seen Felix lately?" he asks Sylvain and Ingrid once, as the three of them are tending to the horses.

"What do you mean?" Sylvain is confused, distracted, as he is crouched by the horse Dimitri is holding, checking her hooves. He _tsks_ under his breath. "I can't see like this…"

He grabs the mare's hind leg and lifts it to look at the horseshoe. Dimitri had his hands on the long cords tethering the horse's halter to the opposite walls of the stall, but now he brings them up to cup his palms behind the mare's eyes when she gets nervous. She calms, snorting a gust of warm air into Dimitri's face.

"Ah _ha!"_ triumphant, Sylvain reaches in with a small hook and wrestles something out of the hoof, then releases the leg and straightens up. "You were saying?"

Dimitri could still back out, probably. If he repeats himself and is wrong, there is no way they will think that they have misheard him.

But the sensation of falling pushes his stomach up into his mouth. 

"I was just wondering if - I have not seen Felix around, much."

"He switched classes," Ingrid pokes over the half-wall between the two stalls, where she is untangling the mane of another horse. "Right after the Battle of the Eagle and Lion? New moon and all."

Dimitri has no idea how long ago this was.

But this means - this means…

Elation mixes with a sucking, pulling feeling he cannot identify. Felix is here, after all - but not _here_ , not anymore. He has not even thought to tell Dimitri, as the class leader if not as a friend - does not owe him that, of course, does not owe him anything, but...

"Switched classes?" Dimitri repeats after her.

"Yeah? Professor Byleth seems to be really something, according to half the academy," Ingrid rolls her eyes, but she sounds - wistful, maybe?

Oh.

Well.

"Do you…" he looks between them as quickly as he can, focuses on his horse, stepping closer so that her dappled grey head fills half of his vision. Breathes in the warm smell of horsehair and straw. "That is - if you should wish to study under Professor Byleth as well…"

"What does it matter? We are trained by all three of them anyway," Ingrid glances down in Dimitri's periphery; he hears her pluck at the strands of hair stuck in the coarse brush.

_'You are our prince,'_ she does not let out.

"It matters a whole lot!" Sylvain leans onto the half-wall to grin down at Ingrid. "We do get special treatment from 'our' professors - and I'd never miss out on Manuela's company! Right, Dimitri?" he throws a look over his shoulder.

_'Someone's gotta keep an eye on you.'_

Dimitri can finally name the feeling then: the humiliating, miserable sense of abandonment. Unwanted, unnecessary, unimportant.

Unstable, unpredictable, helpless. The kind of person who needs to be looked after.

There is spite, too. A trickle of anger drop-dropping onto the wide forehead of whatever is slumbering in him.

Something flickers in Sylvain's expression when Dimitri does not react, drowning in his irritation and shame, dislocated, and he shares a look with Ingrid.

"Don't worry about Felix too much, Your Highness," Ingrid suggests. "It's just classes."

Dimitri nods, stilted around the knot in his throat, the tangle in his chest. She is right, of course.

*

Dimitri is lying on top of his bed - most nights, he does not bother stripping down and getting under the covers, gripped by anticipation, like every next moment can be the one that begins the grand metamorphosis.

He is curled up on his side, and the pillow crinkles under his ear no matter how still he holds himself - like dozens of tiny scuttling insects, separated from him only by a thin layer of washed out greyish fabric.

Dimitri holds his breath, further tenses his already cramped neck, making the headache pulse with his laboured blood. The scuttling pauses. A second later, it resumes.

Dimitri grabs the pillow and flings it off the bed, barely registering the sound of something crashing to the ground as he curls in on himself again. He must have hit the top of his desk, swept something off. It does not matter.

The scuttling does not stop.

Dimitri swallows a howl, thrashes on top of his bed. The blue cover gets tangled around his boots, trapping him, and Dimitri tears it as he struggles free, and he covers his face with his hands and lets out a short, strangled cry in between rapid pants.

Dimitri dozes off - maybe. Or faints, or maybe just blinks, and then Felix is there, in his room. His hands are on his hips, and he is looking down on Dimitri with contempt - or maybe concern? His expression is barely visible in the darkness.

But he is here. He switched classes, but right now, he is here.

Dimitri must have made too much noise - this is not the first time Felix or Sylvain show an outward reaction when he is deep in the throes of visions and anxiety. The walls are thin enough - that is how Dimitri, in turn, knows that they both are plagued by nightmares of their own. 

He never says anything, but they have knocked on the walls before, or pointed it out the next morning.

This is the first time, however, that Felix is in his room. Has he heard Dimitri's longing, perhaps? his loneliness? his crushing despair?

“Felix,” Dimitri mewls in a soft plea for help, his mind hazy and vulnerable with sleeplessness. Does not even know what he is asking for. Anything, really.

An expression of pity pulls at Felix’s face.

“Aw, really now? Mistaking me for my own brother?”

Oh. It is not - it…

“Glenn,” Dimitri corrects himself. Swallows a snarled sob that jabs its way to the top of his throat.

Glenn shakes his head slowly. “Now, now. I know you handle this a lot better when he is the one that lives."

Dimitri is not handling _anything._

“No…" he falters. "I am sorry, Glenn, of course not…”

“There is no shame in it, you know," Glenn settles at the foot of Dimitri's bed, stretches his legs. "That you always like him better than me.”

The idea of a world without Felix in it feels like molten glass trapping Dimitri in its crackling fabric. Saltwater pools in the emptiness of his mouth, makes his ears pop, and his bones are painstakingly built from hair thin splinters.

"You are too busy thinking about unimportant things again," Glenn turns to look at him. The torn skin of his neck is glistening in the meager light. "Hasn't your father taught you better?"

"Leave me, Glenn," Dimitri tries to bury his face in the pillow, but remembers he has thrown it away. "Leave me alone. Not now."

He is so tired. Something is spilling out of him and will not stop. What is going to happen when he runs empty?

"What are you not seeing, Dimitri?" Glenn ignores his words, leans over him. "Hm? What are you missing?"

Dimitri twists his face away from him, screws his eyes shut, rubs his cheek against the blankets, against the tiny scuttling legs.

He is trying, Goddess, he is _trying,_ but he does not _see,_ he cannot figure it out. He stands on the edge, the gusts of wind beating on his back, and darkness churns before him, and he _cannot see._ There is too much, all at once, always. He is standing too close.

He is failing them all. He is failing them.

"Flames, you are truly so blind," Glenn sits up again. "And so stupid. Being your right hand man is going to be so Goddess-damned _exhausting._ But at least we won't saddle my baby brother with it, eh?"

The reminder tears something out through Dimitri's chest, cracking his ribs open like reeds. "No, please, just _stop…"_

He cannot bear this anymore, cannot bear Glenn's taunts, cannot bear him reminding of all the times when Felix is dead. Felix is gone, Felix hates him, is afraid of him, but he is _alive,_ and the thought of that not being true is a jagged blade across Dimitri's convulsing throat.

"Why should I?" Glenn cocks his head innocently. Death has made him so cruel. "Am I not saying the truth?"

Dimitri roars and shoots up, swinging blindly. His left fist connects with the wall, splintering the thick wooden planks, and the heavy stone underneath screeches and groans as it cracks.

Dimitri falls back, his arm quivering, sending shocks into his shoulder and chest. His headache is a gleeful bonfire, burning taller than the sky; a rampaging beast bellowing at the bent bars of its cage.

Glenn looks back at the wall, lets out a low, appreciative whistle.

"And what were you hoping to achieve with that? You _colossal_ mistake," he says with a smirk.

"Dimitri?" Sylvains sleepy, muffled voice from the other side of the wall - slightly clearer, now, as a draft glances through the webbed crack. "No offence, but _what_ was _that?"_

"Just go," Dimitri mutters, shakes his pounding head. His hand hurts; he is tied to the present by the thin strands of pain lacing his bones as they grind against each other. "Please, just go. Leave me be."

Glenn looks at him from the corner of his eye, his head tilted. "You are going to miss it," he warns, suddenly serious. "You are not going to see it coming."

With that, he is gone. Dimitri curls up again on top of the splinters littering his bed and cradles his bruised hand. Considers, distantly, how much more it would hurt if he were not wearing the gauntlets - if he still had full feeling in his hands.

Sylvain does not call out again. Felix stays silent on the other side.

*

Dimitri is the crown prince of a country that was birthed bloodily into this world. A country that tore off its own limb and shook its hand. A country pincered by a powerful, bellicose nation, the nation his own father has fought. A country that is still lusted after by its crimson twin.

And so, Dimitri was raised accordingly. Not one but _four_ tutors have taught him the art of warfare, both open and hidden. He knows how to look for disturbances, knows - if despises - the intricacies of spy games, knows the complicated dance moves of planning and executing assassinations. Knows all the precursors and harbingers of war, some of them better than he knows the holy texts.

Now, the trap is ready to snap shut. All the subtle, inconspicuous signs are piling higher, arranging themselves into a pattern, and Dimitri is on the verge of understanding it. Of figuring it all out.

All the signs are there, but he is not fast enough. Visions or no, tutoring or no - he should have connected the dots sooner.

Dimitri knows how wars begin. Or rather, he thinks he does.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What's all this noise?" The door at the end of the corridor opens, and Cornelia glides in, followed by the guards and several robed men. She stops before the bars of Dimitri's cell and waits as one of the guards unlocks the door, the metal clanging over the crackle of the torches. "How is my dear boy doing?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is the heaviest in terms of CWs, please check the end chapter notes for spoilery details if you feel that this might be risky for you. stay safe!
> 
> more or less in order of appearance:
> 
> \- imprisonment/starvation/restraints  
> \- gory hallucinations  
> \- emetophobia  
> \- sexual assault  
> \- mutilation  
> \- perceived character death  
> \- hardcore dissociation  
> \- canon-typical violence  
> \- suicidal ideation/suicidal thoughts
> 
> and **[HERE](https://twitter.com/royalcorvids/status/1347588019851816961?s=20)** you can find my take on the map of fodlan.

_don’t come to see me, my beloved,_

_don’t attempt to lift my grief:_

_fever-mad night has betrayed me,_

_I won’t live to see the dawn_

He should have known.

He should have seen it coming.

Lord Arundel's visit. Blood boiling in his veins amidst the smoke of Remire, shrouding his mind. The dagger. The dagger. The dagger.

He should have known.

Dimitri's gums ache as he convulses and clenches his teeth, pressing them into the unwarming metal.

"See? I told you you were slow," Glenn sits on the floor in front of him, leaning back against the bars. 

Dimitri envies him so ardently. He is so tired.

_'Why didn't you tell me?!'_ he glares at Glenn, willing him to understand, as a muffled wail finds its way out around the rusted bit pressing down on his scratched tongue. _'If you knew everything, why couldn't you tell me?'_

But Glenn just shrugs, his eyes downcast.

The war began in Garreg Mach, like Dimitri knew it would. He left for Fhirdiad, his lance bloody, his mind cracked open. He had turned eighteen - he could ascend the throne, lead the army, grind his heel into the snake's traitorous head...

Then, a gap in Dimitri's memory, filled with the seething, churning fog, so thick and fluid that he cannot tell the difference between reality and visions.

His class came with him, or did they? No - they left for their own territories. They always do. Dedue was the one who followed him to Fhirdiad.

Where is he? Dimitri does not remember seeing him. Is he alive?

Oh - he dies here so often. Why?

Was Dimitri crowned? Was there time for it? _How much_ time has he lost to the fog?

His uncle…oh.

_Oh._

Dimitri sags in his chains, feels the pull in his shoulders. He always feels so weak. The shackles, clamped around his wrists and ankles and neck, must be imbued with magic of some sort, dampening his already waning strength to the point where he cannot even feel the ancient hum of the Crest in his veins. For the very first time in his life, his strength is utterly useless, leaving him powerless against the restraints.

Dimitri cannot rest: the chains are not long enough to allow him to sit. If he leans against the wall, the stone sucks out what little heat his bared body still has, and eventually his aching knees give out. If he hangs in the chains, they gnaw at his wrists until his hands throb with trapped blood, and his raised arms pull at his ribcage, suffocating him. He catches moments of brittle, troubled sleep as he stands, but always ends up inevitably sagging towards the unattainable floor and wakes up gasping uselessly for air.

His blood feels sluggish and thin, like stale water over marshes. His mind feels slower still.

_‘A man can survive weeks without food’_ \- a memory bobs to its surface, startling in its rare clarity, in a voice that is not his. Who said that? Ser Gustave? That is what he told Dimitri once before abandoning him in the forest outside of Fhirdiad in the hollow heart of late autumn. There was another voice next to him in the dark, a companion, a friend. Who?

Dimitri does not remember. Does not remember the last time he ate, either. Not because it must have been long ago - could have been last week, for all he knows. Two, three days ago. More? He is suspended in the unchanging twilight of his windowless cell, the only source of light a flickering torch down the corridor. The only time that exists is what stretches after every exhale as he contemplates the merits of inhaling again. 

Starvation is easier to survive with enough water, Dimitri does remember _that._ Some of the guards - Faerghans - take sick pleasure in throwing pails of water at him when he manages to nod off, laugh at his panicked thrashing. Some of that drips into his half-open mouth, and Dimitri does not know if it was already foul before or if his filth made it so. He feels nauseous all the time and has no idea if hunger alone is to blame.

His body, what he can see of it, is littered with dark bruises, slow to heal in his weakened state. Dimitri must have fought whoever has chained him down here, in the dungeons under the old castle. He does not remember.

His head hurts, clamped between the iron straps of the bridle. He could have been silenced with a spell or a sigil instead, but Cornelia must have thought this more humiliating.

Right. Cornelia.

He remembers now - he remembers _something._ Uncle, almost bald, his lazy eyes regarding Dimitri like the inconvenience he is. His gauntlets, jerking suddenly, spasming, moving under command that is not his own. The crunch of bone, the wet squelch of torn muscles, the yellow shine of ligaments. The steaming stench of intestinal fluids. The screaming.

A brief moment of stillness, his soaked hands pinned to the wet floor by an unseen force that reeks of floral perfume even through the sour meaty smell. Just enough time for someone to discover him. Just enough for someone to bear witness.

Was it real? Was any of that real?

"Useless," Father rages as he paces the cell. Drops of blood are glistening markers of his short trail. "Moron. You could have had our revenge so easily, and now you ruined it all."

Dimitri lows raggedly around the bit.

"Mistakes, both of you," Father jeers. "Curse this blood."

"You raised him well," a hissing voice on Dimitri's other side. Uncle stands there, bloodless, wrapped in a shroud. It is pulled taut over his concave stomach. "Taught him all about being an oblivious sack of shit."

Father stills, facing the wall, silent. Uncle steps towards Dimitri now, lets the shroud fall away as he looms in his face. The stench of exposed meat hits him again, now tinged with the sweetness of early rot. Dimitri's stomach revolts, and he gags, overcome for a horrible moment with fear that he is going to throw up and suffocate on his own bile. Uncle takes a step back, watches him shiver so hard that the chains rattle.

"You should've stayed down south," he says. "Should've died there, for all I care. I had it all figured out here, right until you had to come and have your little _fit."_

Dimitri grunts in protest, pulls until the shackles cut into the suppurating sores on his skin. Goddess, if only he could talk…

"What's all this noise?" The door at the end of the corridor opens, and Cornelia glides in, followed by the guards and several robed men. She stops before the bars of Dimitri's cell and waits as one of the guards unlocks the door, the metal clanging over the crackle of the torches. "How is my dear boy doing?" 

Two guards step in, swords at the ready. Cornelia crosses the threshold and comes to stand in front of Dimitri, running a light hand along the edge of the bridle, the line of his jaw. 

She is not here to save Dimitri. He knows that well enough.

"I asked you a question, darling," she says in a sweet voice and tugs at one of the straps, slicing the rusted edge of the bit into the corner of Dimitri's mouth.

Dimitri jerks with a muffled noise of pain.

Cornelia smiles and pats his cheek with the pads of her fingers. _"That's_ better."

Dimitri looks away from her, focuses on the robed figures. He recognizes one of them as Ser Killian, an advisor to Uncle. The others are… The slopes of their noses, the cuts of their eyes - they are Adrestians. Imperials in Fhirdiad. Imperials in Cornelia's service.

Which means…

Dimitri turns his wide-eyed gaze back to her. Cornelia laughs.

"I see you are figuring it all out now," she smiles at him, so sickeningly coy. "Well done. Too late, but well done."

Echoes in the dark hall, lit by pulsating green lights, like the ones up in the Rachta Mountains of Gautier. An unearthly, unnatural cold seeping into the bones. A creature of that cold, stepping out into the light to claim a warm body for itself.

Dimitri feels sick again and freezes in place, too terrified to move. He doubts she will let him die like that, but it does not mean she will not enjoy seeing him choke.

Cornelia's smile widens. "You played your role very well, golden Little Prince," she coos and trails a hand down his chest and stomach, grasps roughly between his legs.

A squeeze prompts a startled growl from Dimitri as he tries to squirm away, but there is nowhere to go, nowhere to hide from the - the freezing humiliation twined with the nauseating, confusing jolt of pleasure. He shakes his head to hide behind his hair at least, but it has been shorn off. Uncle watches them over Cornelia's shoulder, pale with furious jealousy.

"This could have been so much fun, truly," with a sigh and a final sick caress, Cornelia releases him and steps back, wiping her hand absently with a handkerchief. "Alas, there is one final call for you to answer, and this is not it."

She half-turns towards her entourage. "Ser Killian, if you please."

The old man does not enter the cell, does not meet Dimitri's eyes. He brings a scroll out from the folds of his dress, unrolls it, and begins to read Dimitri his sentence.

*

He knows how this is going to go.

They will drag him out of the cell by the chains, at dawn. Hit him with a stupefying spell, then a silencer, so that they can finally take off the bridle - it will stick to the bloody crust on his lips, to his dry tongue. They will not care.

He will try to fight, swing his heavy, unwieldy limbs. Lunge for one of them, bite off a finger - the bone will crunch on his teeth, thin and hollow.

Another spell will hit - this one meant to subdue by exhausting through excruciating pain that will twist every fiber of his body inside out. Then, they will drag him, stunned and gasping, out into the small yard, its walls like an empty well, the sky too far away and uncaring. Throw pails of icy water on his flayed, stinging back. Then, spell after spell of the most basic, cosmetic healing, closing the wounds with a thin film and pushing the blood deeper into the skin to lighten the bruises: let it never be said that the gracious Lady Cornelia allows her prisoners to be mistreated. 

Even uncontrollable regicidal maniacs. 

New shackles will clamp around his ankles and wrists. Short, delicate silvery chains, deceptively thin - heavy with magic. His mind will blur further in their twinkling light.

He will be wrapped in something, a thin cloth to preserve his modesty - a laughable concept.

He will come to at the raised podium, the splinters of freshly hewn pinewood slicing their way into the soles of his feet. The sounds will come crashing in: the sea-like roar of the crowd, incomprehensible. The bird cries. The whetstone screeching against the curved blade. The sunlight will blind him with one last stab of headache.

They will read his sentence again, for the crowd's sake more than anything else. Ask him if he has any last words. He will stand there with his mouth forced shut, swaying and shivering. He will try to look for familiar faces in the crowd. He will not find any.

A sack will be pulled over his head, smelling of old vomit and sweat. He will be made to kneel. His neck will be pushed into the cool wooden saddle, worn away and polished smooth by the countless necks before.

He will close his unseeing eyes. Breathe in. Out.

"...Highness. Dimitri! _Dimitri!"_

He jerks and thrashes against the wall when his knees buckle, but someone holds him up, grabs a chain to stop the rattle.

They are here, they have come for him, it is the morning already, every breath is a grain of sand and there are only so many left - and Dimitri knows how it is going to end but he will not make it _easy_ for them as long as he can move a muscle…

He tries to kick out and is stopped short by the length of the chain as it scrapes along his skinned ankle.

"Dimitri, _please_ be quiet…" comes the urgent whisper, and Dimitri finally forces his eyes open and focuses them on the silhouette in front of him, on the person pinning him firmly to the wall so that he would not fall.

"Dedue?" he tries to ask, but it comes out as a cracked moan.

"One moment." Dedue reaches carefully around his head, fidgets with the clasp of the bridle until it comes undone, slides it gently off Dimitri and out of his mouth.

Dimitri wheezes, probes his sore tongue against the ridges of the roof of his mouth, trying to wet it, but Dedue does not pause, carefully undoing his shackles one by one. Where did he get the key? The Crest stirs sluggishly as the chains fall away.

"There isn't much time," Dedue whispers as Dimitri sags against the freezing wall. "I knocked the guards out, but they might be discovered at any moment. Here," he slides a bag off his back and pulls out a bundle. "Gauntlets first."

Dedue brought him his gauntlets. Dimitri could cry right now. 

They quickly wrestle them onto Dimitri's hands - they are black and bigger than the ones he wore before, but work just as well, fit perfectly over the new gloves - and as Dedue moves to the edge of the cell to stand on lookout, Dimitri pulls on everything else he has brought: underclothes and woolen socks, a tunic, a padded shirt, a jacket, a thick pair of pants, fur-lined boots - all in dark colours. There is a corked skin in the bag, and Dimitri greedily gushes down the water in it, long past any decorum, reveling in the way it softens the dry insides of his mouth and throat. 

"One last thing," Dedue picks up a long object wrapped in a length of deep blue cloth from where it's been leaning against the wall and offers it to Dimitri.

Dimitri unwraps it and is met with the fanged gleam of Areadbhar. He has...never held it in his hands before. It is the King's weapon. Father's weapon.

He runs his fingers along the bony blade and it pulses to life, singing faintly to the tune of the Crest.

"How did you…?" he rasps, incredulous.

"Lord Rodrigue had it retrieved from your father’s armoury," Dedue explains, glancing towards the exit. "He helped me get in, too. The men of Fraldarius in the castle will cover for us if our absence is noticed before we can leave."

"But where do we go?" Dimitri asks as they start creeping out of the cell. "East?"

"Fraldarius is our best bet, right now," Dedue agrees, cracking open the exit door and tilting his head, trying to look beyond.

Dimitri fastens the cloth around his neck like an impromptu cloak - it even has the Faerghan coat of arms on it - and carefully grips the unfamiliar weight of Areadbhar. Fraldarius… Will Felix be there?

Is Felix _here?_

Dedue mutters a curse in Duscuri, and Dimitri knows it before Dedue needs to speak: the way is not clear.

"Then we fight," he whispers.

Dedue nods. "I will buy you time."

"What? No," Dimitri protests, but Dedue has already taken off, running down the passageway on near-silent feet. "Dedue!"

_'Don't you dare.'_

Dedue runs, Dimitri follows, and before long they are noticed and pulled into a fight, and the commotion draws more attention as the sounds of hits and grunts echo along the corridors.

There are too many. The passageway is too narrow, the visions fluttering around it and mixing with the shadows thrown by the torchlight. The guards wear Fhirdian uniforms, but Dimitri does not see the dark-haired Fraldarian men among them. Sometimes, they are here, helping them level the fight. Not this time, and once the surprise wears off, they do not have much of an advantage.

Soon enough, Cornelia will be alerted. A wicked grin pulls at Dimitri's torn lips at the thought: maybe he will get the chance to kill her before they dogpile him.

"Maybe you won't fail at this, at least," Father snipes as Dimitri swings his - _their_ lance, sending another guard flying with her chest split open. "Maybe you'll do something useful at last in your pathetic life."

Dimitri grunts in assent, pins a man to the wall with Areadbhar, pulls it out of him to skewer another man with the blunt end in the same motion. The Crest itches, charging, the fire of it stoked by the frothed churning of his blood.

Somebody rushes him - a heavily armoured man with a hammer, burly and snarling - knocks him into the wall, and that is all it takes for the Crest to flare in a blinding flash of light, and with a thunderclap, the world crumbles into the darkness.

No, not the world - only the arching wall, and the light from a surviving torch returns as the dust settles somewhat, but filling only half the narrow world. Dimitri's head is screaming in agony - but no, not the head, the eye, something happened to his _eye._

Dimitri reaches up with his right hand, misjudges the distance, sticks his fingers into something squelching; a startled cry rips out of him, and the glove comes away shining with blood. He is on his knees, trying to curl around the wound, but blood rushes to his head, weighs down the thick pulses of pain.

Dimitri heaves, spits out the water and the bile that burns the back of his scrubbed throat, tries to back away, but the pain follows, it follows and feels like a living creature burrowing into his skull, and he howls and lifts a hand to _tear it out,_ but there is nothing _to_ tear out, only the tender give of mangled flesh under the press of his gauntlets, the catch of a jagged split down his cheek. He heaves again, and his left hand slips on the floor, and the sudden motion drags at him with a hook, yanking out another strangled scream.

This is beyond any hurt, beyond any pain, it transcends the very idea of something that can be contained by mere flesh. Dimitri cries out again, feeling faint, blood pulsing out of him onto the rubble under his palms, leaving him colder with every clot.

A thought pierces the foaming maroon fog. 

Why is he alive?

The wall fell right around him - how is he here? If it caught everyone else - there are no signs of fighting, nobody swings at him from above - how did _he_ survive?

He survives - insanely, he survives this, because he is pushed out of the way - always pushed out of the way, because the man who does it is the man who will always put Dimitri before himself, even if it means...

"Oh _no,"_ Dimitri unscrews his good eye, crawls over to the pile of rocks and starts shoving them away with his hands, blinking through the clouds of dust. The agony splitting his head is, just for a moment, eclipsed by a deeper sort of pain, and he is suddenly reminded of the way they met: him, digging frantically through the rubble; Dedue, waiting for him to save him.

He uncovers a body, and it is unmoving, oh Goddess - but no, it is not him but one of the guards, eyes open in the glassy shock of death, dust invading his slack mouth.

Dedue is deeper, somewhere. Dedue is…

Dimitri lurches up, sways on his feet, winded and scraped empty as the air leaves him. He clasps a hand over his mouth, bites into the leather of the glove. His teeth are coated in congealing blood.

Dedue always shoves him away. 

He should have controlled his Crest. Should have been more careful, should not have allowed himself to be rushed so recklessly…

Dedue fights beside him, in all the times the cave in did not happen. Saving his sacrifice for another chance. Dimitri feels violently nauseous again.

The stonework rumbles in residual aftershocks, the rocks trying - and failing - to settle. A trickle runs through the cracks from the river trapped underground, the same that fills out the moat.

"Please," Stepmother sobs, stretches her arms out to him. "Please don't stay here - you will die, my dear, come, come…"

"I don't want to…" he stumbles, sags against the trembling wall - the rush of the fight escapes him, the flare of the Crest dims, leaving him weak and used; tattered, half-blind, starving. "I don't…"

"You have work to do," Father growls, blood running freely down his forehead, into his crazed eyes. "The imperials - they will pay. They will all pay for what they did to us."

"Pick up your lance, Your Highness," Dedue smashes his axe into a ghostly guard's thigh. "Hurry."

It is his voice that finally whips Dimitri into action. He grabs Areadbhar and stumbles for the exit, down the groaning, convulsing passageway as the wall behind him crumbles under the strain.

Outside greets him with darkness and biting cold, soothing and scraping at his wounds. He does not watch his step, listing to the left, avoids the commotion of the dungeon guards escaping the cave in, avoids falling into the half-frozen moat. The castle grounds are a dense, unkempt forest stretching well beyond the city limits, bleeding into the Dark Woods north of Fhirdiad, and he tears his way through it in the dead of the night, unnoticed in his dark clothes, the light of Areadbhar dimmed under the cloak. 

He keeps going for as long as he can, tripping in the dark, throwing himself bodily through the snowy branches. The cold numbs his face, scares the pain deeper into his skull like a furtive animal.

He closes his eyes - eye - eyes - and just walks, dragging Areadbhar behind him. Dedue is dead.

Dedue is dead.

Dimitri curls forward in an instinctive desire to protect his heart, but it is no use: it is already slashed open and pouring blood, wetting his every gasp.

Dedue is dead.

Dimitri keeps walking. Eventually, he cannot any longer.

*

*

*

_savoury smell of darkness,_

_bitter forest cradle_

_‘bear cub’ was your name,_

_now you've grown into a dire beast_

Time used to move in stutters. 

Now, it does not move at all. 

*

Away from everyone writhing in their throes of uncertainty, Dimitri perceives the world with more clarity than he has had in years. His mind, when he is lucid, has the piercing transparency of an ice shard, with an edge both cutting and fragile. He breaks it, crumbles it, starves out obsessively everything that does not have to do with basic survival, and then some. And like an ice shard smashed in a fist, it all disappears without a trace. He does not need this clarity. He does not want it.

He slips under. 

*

He does not know where Areadbhar is. It was making his blood itch in an angry, serrated way, like a rabid creature scratching to be released, the same way the traps on his arms make it itch. But _those_ beasts, he needs.

*

He is by a river. It could be Gwen, could be Ilykar. The water is wide and heavy and does not froth like it does in the mountains, so it is not Itha or Fralla, not upstream at least. 

It is summer. Sleek arrows of fish are darting underwater, among the columns of the reeds. Their dance pulls at something in his memory, from a lifetime ago: an older child - Sylvain - teaching the three of them how to fish in the rapids. Felix - the one next to him - crying desperately at the idea of baiting a worm. 

He stabs through the water with a pointed piece of wood, spearing a writhing, glittering body. Grasps it tightly with his other hand, watches the helpless give of flesh, the panicked thrashing of life.

How foolish. What would a worm matter. 

*

He was supposed to go to Fraldarius, he remembers suddenly. But what is the point? He carries nothing but rot, spreading it with every step. There is no one worth saving in this broken body. 

Felix would be pleased to be proven right. He gloats at the thought.

*

Autumn is wetter here, wherever 'here' is, than it would be in Fhirdiad. He resurfaces from the murk only to inhale a raspy lungful of near-water. Huddles deeper into his soaked clothes, hacks out a shuddering cough that feels like water, too. The coldness of wet fabric, the brittle warmth trapped between it and his skin is unbearable against the inferno of his ravaged body. What moon is it? Where is he? 

With only one eye left, he sees the world as something flat and unreal, insubstantial and thin unless he holds it in his grip and yanks it closer.

His grasp slips again. He lets it. 

*

He is lying at the edge of a field, his half-vision blurry. The frail frost on his lashes cracks and shivers when he lifts them. The air smells of soil, the soil under his cheek smells of water. 

He lets his eye wander. Tracks the spotted hides of quaking aspens that stare right back with their many eyes, the fire licks of physalis lanterns. The dried silvery coins of lunaria quiver anxiously with every sigh of the wind. 

Are they not called 'cuckoo's tears'? Or was it something else? He does not remember. 

*

He is staring at his face in a blubbering stream. His wounded eye is pale, milky, with a marble vein running down the middle - with this eye, he only sees blackness, an insight into the void. The slashed eyelids, petals of blazing red, are scarred almost completely stiff and cannot close fully. There is no feeling in them either, not anymore, only a pause in awareness when he raises a just as unfeeling hand to touch his face.

His beard is barely a stubble, rough and patchy. His hair is short, hanging limply just past his ears. He is too starved for either to grow. He must be - the few things he remembers eating were...far from proper food, and his ribs ache where they press against the sweat-crusted fabric. The Crest will keep him alive, but how long? 

He strips, crawls into the stream, lies supine in the shallows with his eyes closed, red-black void in both. The cold water gurgles in his ears. The sun is a pale hint, slashed by the branches overhead.

Is getting up worth it? 

Can his ruined eye still cry?

*

He is littered with tiny sores. Scratches, bug bites, patches of irritated, cracked skin. Everything heals so, so slowly. The tender border between him and everything that is not him breaks, spilling him out. Lifting his puffy eyelid aches too much, pulls too much, itches too much. He does not bother. 

There was a tick nestled in his armpit - he did not notice it quickly enough where it was masked by the sweet-salty ache of swollen nodes, the same kind he feels under his jaw. Now he is feverish, the world unstable and unpredictable when he tries to move. His head hurts, hurts so badly - but it always hurts, this is nothing new. 

His limbs spasm, knock against the ground where he lies curled up, outside of his control. Fingers dig into the earth, curl around the wires of roots, as if he could anchor himself with them to this wretched, cobbled together half-existence. 

He feels so tired. So tired. 

Maybe he will not wake up. 

*

There is a direwolf pelt around his shoulders. A part of it, matted with old blood, is poking him in the neck like the tease of a maw. It has the winter pattern: black and white.

The summer is stifling.

He does not remember killing the animal. Does not remember hunting or foraging for food, not recently, but there is dried gore on his lips and chin and small, crudely scraped skins in his pockets. He snarls at his body for clinging to survival. What for?

*

He is sitting on the shore of the Pitted Sea. That must be the one: he sees an island in the minced fog, so it cannot be the Darida Bay in Fraldarius, and the river that he crossed a day ago did not smell of sulphur, so it was not Ailell flowing into the Eye Socket. Which means it must be the Pitted Sea, and Ilykar, and the Pits hiding in the mist.

He frowns. He has wandered too close to Blaiddyd.

There is no goal to his wandering, not really. Nothing beyond the blood-deep, desperate need to keep moving somewhere, anywhere. He paces the cage of the land, and he does not know why he is doing it, but he cannot stop.

He shifts in his spot against a boulder, the layered bulk of it hiding him from the worst of the wind. The waves are high and choppy, pocked into illness with a thin rain, throwing themselves on the shore in ravenous supplication. They almost reach his hiding place - the tide is high. He muses about heeding their call. How would it feel, their firm, heavy press? How deep would it pull him? Deep enough, perhaps, that the void will bloom in both of his eyes for good. Consume him fully at last. 

He is slumped sideways against the boulder, blinking blearily at the horizon. The sun swims in the fog, a blood clot in simmering milk.

To his left, a flock of cormorants is huddling under an outcropping. The birds shuffle awkwardly, trying to dry their limp oil-less wings in the damp air. The hanging mass of rock is a much better shelter from the elements.

He does not move there.

The sea is so loud, it drowns all his thoughts where it cannot drown his body. The sight in his remaining eye has been declining in increments, so if he does not make the effort, it is easy to pretend he cannot see at all. He retreats into himself, deafened and blinded, swayed gently by the calling rhythm of the water, flirting sweetly with the relief it would bring. There is no relief, not really, but that is alright. It is just a fantasy.

"Dimitri." 

He starts, twisting his shoulder against the unforgiving rock. Lowers his head. His heart flutters - it does that a lot since that shaky illness gripped him during a summer.

"How long are you still going to wallow?" 

His shoulder aches. He makes no move to rub the pain away.

"Answer me, bastard."

With a flinch, Dimitri uncurls his body. Hiding only makes Father madder.

He has not seen any of them in a while - not that he remembers, anyway. Not that he remembers much of anything. In the rare moments when he is aware enough to turn his gaze inwards, to search for memories, the more he worries at them the faster they unravel, twisting themselves beyond recognition. He forgets...he forgets. Faces blur into unidentifiable masses of flesh. Events feel disjointed, torn out of the timeline. Float out of his grasp like bug-shredded leaves in the churning water.

Some things he does not want to remember, skirts around them. Those shards stay sharp.

"A pitiful sight," Father chides. "Get up. You have work to do."

"Work?" Dimitri tries to say, but it comes out in a croak. He has not spoken in - how long?

"Look east," Stepmother leans beside him, lifts a thin hand clad in rotten fabric, the veins snaking along it in black streaks. "Haven't you noticed?"

Dimitri follows her pointing fingers, traces the curve of the waves.

There are soldiers on the shore. A small group - maybe a dozen. They are not likely to notice him from here - have not noticed this far - but they are close enough for Dimitri to see - almost.

He squints, willing his eye to focus. 

Red and black. An eagle embossed on the commander's chestplate. 

"Our enemies," Father gnashes his teeth. "They have ruined Fhirdiad. They are ruining Faerghus. They are killing innocents."

"I am not Faerghus’s prince anymore," Dimitri says.

"What does _that_ matter?" Father scoffs. "They deserve to die all the same. Do they not?"

Rats crawling across the land. Dirty maggots.

"They do."

"Is it not your duty? To show them their place? To avenge the pointless deaths?"

Heat rises up Dimitri's throat, forgotten and thick, makes his teeth ache in anticipation. Something wakes in him, slow and wrathful, stretches and cracks the sharp ridges of its spine. "It _is."_

"He does not have the lance," Dedue speaks quietly. A cool wave of disappointment sloshes in his eyes. Tired frustration. "Where is your lance?"

"What use does he have of it?" Glenn laughs. "He's an animal. He's got enough at his disposal."

Dimitri grinds his teeth, slowly. Moves his jaw, one side to another. Gets up. The cormorants turn their skeletal beaks to watch him, alerted.

"Kill every imperial that stands in your way," Father leans in, his breath a waft of desiccated heat. "Kill every last one of them."

Dimitri nods. Pulls the humid air into his lungs, tilts his head to judge the wind. The fog should cover his approach long enough. Afterwards, it will make no difference even if they do notice him.

*

Awareness returns to Dimitri slowly, ill-fitting and rigid, grating on his exhausted mind. But the more he kills, the more blood he spills, the better it glues him back to his body.

He does not feel sick over the blooms of gore anymore. Long ago, there used to be an impulse to empty his guts, an answering protest of his own living body, but now he is one with the carnage. Now, he feels nothing but grim satisfaction as another soldier tears under his hands like paper. Now, he feels rage, unbridled and merciless.

The flat unreality of Dimitri’s vision does not bother him anymore. If he swings wide enough, brutal enough, the hits land anyway.

He stalks the valley of Gwen and Ilykar like a wraith, attacks the imperials like a creature born of shadows and hellfire, draining their rat blood into the rivers. Troops pass the valley on the way to Fhirdiad, sprawl their supply chains like veins, he is quick to learn. Quick to slash those veins, too. Few manage to reach the capital. Their panicked thrashing, their splintering realities stab him anew with the piercing headache, but their uncertainty does not save them. Their fear, their begging, their cries do not save them.

They transport people, weapons, supplies. Anything to feed the war against the resistance - within the city and that of the loyalists in the east. Dimitri learns that as he slinks through the shadows in the towns and villages of central Faerghus, for the first time in forever treading roads and streets rather than animal trails, the packed earth pushing strangely back against his feet. That is where he sinks the hook in the timeline for the first time in what turns out to be years: nearly four have passed since his execution.

Dimitri listens. Learns. Commits to memory. Feeble as it is, it does not need to cradle the information for long: he dispatches the vermin swiftly enough. Preys upon their cargo.

Dimitri acquires armour. Weapons. Tools. Clothes and bandages, sometimes. All of it is transient. All unimportant.

He feeds the rage, and it stalks the shaking cage of his body, always growling for more, again, again, for a bigger enemy, for a bloodier sacrifice. Dimitri sings with it, exhilarated, grim, angry. 

*

His lance splinters and breaks on an upswing, and Dimitri lets the motion of it continue, drives the broken end into the softness under the soldier's chin with a snarl. Leaves it there, drops into a crouch to avoid a wild jab of a sword, lunges for the wielder's throat with his hands. The _crack_ rings in his ears, sings in his fingers, and he pushes them deeper, clenches them tighter, drinks in the noise as it grows wetter. 

These men think their weapons give them an edge, but Dimitri _is_ the weapon, is nothing _but_ edges.

*

Dimitri tears the ropes holding down the canvases that cover one of the conquered carts, lifts the thick cloth only to see useless jars of oil. Growls and heaves another cart, scattering bundles of spears. Roars his wrath that tapers off into a groan of pain as he presses a hand against his bleeding side.

Clay pots of fat. Steel boots. Leather.

No vulneraries. No bandages, either.

Blood seeps between his fingers, the deep cut stinging and roiling. The wound steams in the cold air.

Very well. He will bleed, then.

*

Death is difficult by unskilled hands - and so he does not die.

*

But not impossible, perhaps.

The world is spinning as Dimitri lies on his back, head turned to the side at a painful angle. They are all dead - but maybe, this time, he will be too.

Blood seeps into the warm soil. Perhaps it cannot discern between that and the feverish heat of his body. Does not know where it is supposed to go. 

He is so hungry. So hungry he cannot move from his sprawl on the blood-damp ground.

There is blood in his mouth, too - Dimitri does not know how it came to be there. He cannot taste it, of course, but he can smell the rusty tang of it, can feel the way it clings to his tongue and teeth.

A dead soldier's face swims into view when he moves his eye. Glides his gaze from one body to another. They blur in the dim light, the ghosts above them dissolving into un-being as they finish their dances - the fight rarely lasts this long. 

Dimitri blinks. Swallows.

Next time he is lucid - what passes for lucidity - snow is falling, and he is in a different place.

*

There is a pull, a call so wavering and subtle that Dimitri almost does not notice it. A pull south - to do what? To kill? No - to fulfill a promise. To meet - someone - somewhere…

But he never gave such a promise. Nothing is waiting for him there, not anymore, not this time.

*

The rats send groups of soldiers specifically to take out the mysterious threat to their supply chains. Send swordsmen, and hunters, and scent-hounds. The only difference it makes is that now, the prey comes to him. They send mercenaries too, hire Faerghans: those, Dimitri evades or knocks out. If other animals get to them before they find the way back to their camps and settlements, that is not his problem. There are only so many chances the wilderness can be persuaded to give.

The rage sings and sings and sings, lowering into a threatening growl or rising into a blood-curdling scream, and Dimitri houses it in the cracked vessel of his body, and clenches it between his teeth, and carries it on and on and on.

It is not a purpose, not really. But it is simple. It will do.

It keeps Dimitri's ghosts placated - until it does not.

Father is cackling when the blood-sweated fog settles and Dimitri emerges from it, panting and dripping gore. They look at each other, both crazed, both at least half-dead.

"They will pay," Father laughs. "They will _all_ pay."

Dimitri nods. "They will."

"Kill everyone," Father's voice is venom, insidious and slimy.

Dimitri stabs his lance into a dead soldier's skull, twists it, leaves it steadied. Picks up a new one from a slack hand. "I will," he repeats.

"Kill everyone who stands in your way to _her."_

Dimitri stills. Turns his head slowly south.

"Her," he muses. The growl rumbles in his throat, a threat, a birth of an earthquake.

A flutter in the hot wind. A shadow unfurls over the sky. 

_Her._

The shards shift, dragging their edges along his nerves. He remembers, now.

The traitor. The killer. She stood by while they were all massacred. While the Remire village burned and its people tore into each other with bare hands. While Demonic Beasts emerged from the bodies of children, the foul Crest stones bending the sinuous matter to their will. While those mages orchestrated every atrocity with no regard to fairness, not a shrivel of decency - the same people, perhaps, who had stalked the ravines of Duscur. 

She stood by, knowing, complacent. She watched. She hid all this away from him while he shuddered apart in his blind chase after answers. She pretended. She spoke casually, as if it were nothing.

No better than a killer herself. 

Dimitri steps away from the memories and instead dives headfirst into the churn of visions, like he did ages ago, foolish and soft, when he still did not know which roll of thunder covered up a beast's ear-splitting wail. He knows better now.

His head protests the violent torrents so much that his ears bleed, but Dimitri is relentless. It is only blood. It is unimportant. He has to be sure, even though he already knows the truth in his rotten heart. He needs to see how it all goes. He needs to see where it begins. 

Dimitri unwinds every thread backwards, methodically dismembers every event, pops open every joint until he can trace the trail of intestines back to its source. The source is always the same. 

Fire, blood, the clash of steel against iron. Flames consuming timber. Writhing, tied up bodies sinking into bitter, briny water. A venal spill of banners. An answering arterial splash of a dress.

Famine, riots, dying crops. A minister, face pressed against messily scribbled orders, poison dampening the slowing beating of his heart. A half-bow, amused, satisfied. A contemplative tilt of a head, white locks sway with the movement.

A land cracking into chaos, decades and centuries of messy, vicious infighting unfolding like a yellowed scroll. Crosses of shadows darting over the still sandy waves like sleek underwater creatures. A slashed throat, a broken locket, an ill-timed arrow. A slender hand is raised to point out a ghostly wyvern.

The continent burns as she watches.

It is her. It is always her.

Everything leads to her, and then everything falls into the abyss. Dimitri tracks the descent with his ruined eye. 

Dedue stands next to Dimitri - quietly, as always. He has no eyes today, the cavities blackened and pulpy.

"I owe it to you," Dimitri tells him. Blinks slowly, aware of the slick slide of his eyelid. The blind eye is covered with a scrap of leather - sweat and gore irritated it, were difficult to clean. "I owe you that much."

Dedue clenches his jaw, turns his face away. "You killed me," he says. "You owe me more."

"She must suffer as we have suffered," Father's grin is all teeth. Gunk seeps between them, pools in the cleft behind the bottom lip. Spills over. "If she thinks all of this is deserved, then we must show her that she is no less _deserving."_

Stepmother is crying again. Dimitri waits to see if she says anything, but there are only her sobs, echoing in his ears like whistling brushes of wind between the rocks on the seashore, spearing his brain.

How many more is she going to kill on the way to her goal? How many more are going to suffer for her sick pleasure? Dimitri has not looked before, but now that he does, now that finally sees - she was everywhere, always, _is_ everywhere. It never mattered what he would try to do in his naive, idealistic flight to do the right thing: she would wreck it all.

"So if she dies - what then?" Glenn grabs at the lance Dimitri has left in the corpse, runs a distracted finger along the shaft. Something nicks him - must be a broken fiber of the wood. Dimitri did not bother to be careful with it.

Then all of this can stop. Faerghus will breathe. Fódlan will breathe, free of the treacherous disease.

And all of them will rest, finally, when Dimitri throws her head at their feet.

All these sacrifices - all these deaths - all these realities that did not come into being. They cannot have been for nothing.

He will make sure of it.

_"Kill her!"_ Father raves. His hair is loose, a tangled mane of a lion. A mad king.

"Avenge us," Stepmother pulls her hands away from her face. Tears have trodden deep woodworm tracks into her skin. She is resigned, anger rising in her like a bud of a poisonous flower. "You must - you must. It must be so."

Dedue is facing him again. "You promised to save my people and you broke that promise. If you want to stand a chance at atonement - I want her head."

Dimitri holds his eyeless gaze. "I swear."

"I don't care for your oaths," Dedue's upper lip curls. "Do it."

"What's the plan, then?" Glenn slices his finger further, follows the drop of blood running down the lance with fascination. "Or are you just talk?"

Dimitri grins in response, cold and cruel. Hatred warms his limbs, and his heart stutters once - and starts beating faster, a frenetic, seizing rhythm. The tune of the hunt, the tune of the slaughter - now with a clear, tangible goal.

That lying, conniving, heartless…

Laughable, really, that Dimitri once sought to protect her. Should have let the bitch die. Better yet, should have killed her himself when he had the chance. Twisted her wretched head right off her neck…

He will fix it.

Now, _where…_

Dimitri finds himself a den, barricades the exit. The ghosts hold vigil outside. He will not be distracted.

He falls into a trance easily now, the floating detachment of it delightfully close to death. It has never felt so simple - probably never will again. Dimitri walks every path, sniffing out the trail, spreading himself thin to the point of snapping, the fragile threads of his mind wavering under the strain. Where must he go? Where will he find her?

Who will he kill on the way to her throat?

The paths branch out before him - and grow closer in their heady pull until they fall into each other again. The way narrows with a certainty, with a sense of finality that a grave would carry. 

Every path leads...to Gronder.

Dimitri considers it. Expands his awareness further, shivering, teetering on the edge of unconsciousness. Checks again. 

Gronder.

A war on two fronts. The _arrogance_ in her. She will be fighting the Alliance - their lords will quarrel until it is too late. Until they have no chance to negotiate. Until they have to meet her head on.

At Gronder.

The tempest of wrath billows in Dimitri's chest, a curse and a war cry in one. They always meet at Gronder. They were always meant to. That is the only way. The _one_ way.

Very well. Gronder it is.

But there is more to it - or, rather, _less._ Beyond Gronder, the raging ghostly sea stills. Dimitri circles it warily, tries to listen closely, but there is…nothing.

Beyond Gronder, there is nothing. No visions. No futures. No headaches.

The emptiness of it is a crater in the ground, and Dimitri steps closer, fascinated by the creature that has made its lair at the bottom of it. 

Does he - oh. Does he die there? Is that what it means?

Is Dimitri finally going to die?

Dimitri freezes, retreats. Considers the velvety blanket of silence, the rush that comes with suddenly stepping on air. The crater shifts invitingly, waiting for an offering. Dimitri brings one foot over the edge. 

Could he, truly? Could he? 

The feeling of hopeful relief is so sharp he feels its blades in his throat - or it might be the incoming onslaught of tears. After his destroyed childhood, after his adolescence crushed under an impossible weight…

He is going to _die._ He is going to die - he will be free. He will rest.

Dimitri only needs to make sure that _she_ goes down with him. But after that, there is only silence. There is finally, blessedly, silence.

They are all waiting when Dimitri emerges from the den with monstrous grace. The sparse moonlight bathes him in its last moment baptism. 

He needs to find Areadbhar again - and the moment he thinks it, the itch heightens in frequency until it pushes itself to the forefront of his awareness again. Ah. He remembers now where he has hidden it away.

"So?" Glenn asks as Dimitri slowly turns his head, following the high-pitched not-noise of the Crest, the curious connection to the Relic - the pull, the craving is almost impossible to resist. 

He is eager to begin, drunk on the rush of energy that he no longer needs to conserve. His body is devouring itself alive, and he revels in the sensation.

It will be a long way south. It will be a difficult battle, hard to navigate among all the fighting he has no interest in. But Dimitri only needs to reach the conclusion of it all. He has lived for so long, never asking for this, never wanting - he can live until then, too. Dimitri smiles, magnanimous in the face of his nearing mortality. Yes, he can live until then.

The wrath at her burns out and implodes, turns into a sucking, ice-hot void. It demands blood, still, always, and Dimitri will gladly feed it. May it consume it all.

He bares his teeth. "I am going to Gronder."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....i feel compelled to clarify that i actually like edelgard. dimitri, however, doesn't at this point in time, hence the "unreliable narrator" tag.
> 
> details for CWs:
> 
> \- gory hallucinations: dimitri hallucinates everything leading up to the last moment before his execution + gory ghosts (disemboweled rufus, eyeless dedue, glenn casually slicing himself up, you know the drill)  
> \- emetophobia: dimitri feels the urge to throw up two times, which scares him because of the restraints. later, he throws up because of eye trauma  
> \- sexual assault: dimitri gets briefly groped by cornelia. the segment begins with "Cornelia's smile widens" and ends before "She half-turns towards her entourage", if you need to skip.  
> \- mutilation: dimitri remembers killing rufus. in the execution vision, he bites off a guard's finger. later, he loses an eye and makes the mistake of poking at his face.  
> \- perceived character death: dedue :")


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You ungrateful, rabid beast," Felix snaps, and ghosts of all his other insults echo around him. "You don't even know how we…" _‘how I…’_ He cuts himself off and shakes his head, decisive. "I will _not_ allow you to waste all our effort like this." He points his bloodied sword at Dimitri's throat. "Stand down, animal."
> 
> Effort? What effort?
> 
> He left him to _die._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter:
> 
> \- war-related violence  
> \- violent visions  
> \- felix's brand of dehumanization
> 
> more info in the end notes!

_everyone’s fate is already foretold_

_and survivors-to-be are ordered to rest_

The field of Gronder is an ugly, visceral massacre. 

The battle parts before Dimitri like the sea. Some people cry out at the sight of him - in recognition or in fear - but the sounds glance off, failing to catch his attention from beyond the flaming wall of his headache. He cuts his way through the waves of gleaming armour, topples yellow and red banners, maims and kills, the turning tide of life and death dancing beneath his hands.

The field, the very soil of it, echoes with memories of years past. Someone tumbles into him - a black uniform leaning into the matted fur of his cloak - but the specter is gone before Dimitri can catch sight of the person’s face. Behind him, the blue banners rise, ghostly, tattered; the dead close ranks, peering at him with dirt-filled eye sockets. Dimitri nods, grinds every step into the ground. Let them see. Let them know.

Dimitri might be alone, but his army walks with him.

He has maybe hours left, at most. Dimitri does not know where Edelgard is, not yet, but he ploughs on, unrelenting. He does not bother trying to figure out her exact position or the best route to it through the battle: he always finds her. This is how it always ends.

The rush of blood in his ears is deafening, drowning out everything else, and Dimitri finds himself timing his steps to the beating of his pulse, and with them, the arcing strikes of Areadbhar. People before him blur into a writhing, screaming, ringing mess, and he doesn’t care to sift through it and separate reality from potentials - the swings of his lance harvest them all.

Dimitri loses track of time. It is monotone, boring, predictable. He only wants to get to the end of it. It is not always clear what familiar faces he has to strike down on the way to Edelgard - or who gets to strike him down first - but it does not matter. She awaits. He wonders if she knows he is coming.

A knight appears before him, his black war horse rearing and striking out with its front legs. Sunlight spills over dark armour, setting it ablaze - but no, it is not fire, it is red hair, longer now, but still, stubbornly, never confined to a helmet.

Sylvain.

Traitor. Coward.

Dimitri changes his grip on Areadbhar, goes for the horse first. Sylvain always relies too much on being mounted, but once Dimitri can get him on the ground...

Areadbhar cleaves the horse’s chest clear in two, and then - and then it is not a horse anymore, it is an imperial soldier, infantry, her face frozen in the silent shock of the newly dead. Her torso topples off the lance, connecting with the ground in a messy tangle of metal and steaming intestines.

Sylvain is not there. Not this time.

Dimitri grits his teeth and bears on.

He makes out the cluster of imperial banners, high atop a hill, and slices his way towards it in blood and phlegm. The hill appears before him suddenly, bulging from the horizon like a boil - a dark hull of a beast against the watchful gaze of the sky.

Another figure steps out of the chaos of fighting - Glenn. He is armourless this time save for a leather pauldron, dressed in a thin coat of Fraldarian colours. There are specks of blood on the off-white sleeve of his sword arm. Dimitri smiles without humour at the poetry of it, of Glenn’s amber gaze having followed him into this painful, fractured world - now, following him as he prepares to step out of it.

With Dimitri at the foot of the command hill, time presses down, urges him on his narrowing path, but he will always have a moment for Glenn - well. Maybe the future tense is irrelevant now. 

Dimitri inclines his head in greeting. "Are you here to bear witness?" 

Glenn throws a wild-eyed look at Edelgard's banners, back at him, locking onto his eye. "You're going to get yourself killed!" he shouts. He has never needed to shout before - Dimitri hears them over everything else, always.

"I know." This is how it ends. Whether Dimitri goes down alone or takes Edelgard with him is concealed from him, but he is hurtling towards the revelation of it like a stone from a catapult. It is not long now. He feels his path growing stiffer, cutting off more and more branches as it does. "I will avenge you all. I will make you proud. I will put a stop to this."

Dimitri has failed so many times. But this is his last chance to do something right, and by the Goddess will he give it his all. He has nothing else left, and if the price is to go up in flames - he is ready to pay it. 

Glenn lets out a wordless, angry scream, and it rings strangely in Dimitri’s ears. Goddess does his head hurt.

"Are you _actually_ insane?! They will cut you down, you won't ever reach her, you - you stupid _boar!"_

The word strikes Dimitri square in the chest, like a full body tackle, a gale, a lungful of thorns. He pauses, peers closely at Glenn's face. Could it be… 

"Felix?" he ventures. Shifts his stance at the answering widening of Glenn's - Felix's eyes. 

The ghosts murmur around him. Father places a heavy hand on his shoulder. Burnt, slashed, torn shadows slink closer, mingling with the carnage, indistinguishable. Felix’s silhouette shudders apart under their inquisitive hands.

Real or not? Traitor or not? He was not in Fhirdiad - he left him to die.

Felix has not attacked, yet, and everything is happening at once, so much that the realities blur together, making it hard to discern... 

How is he - why is he here? He is not supposed to be at Gronder, he is never- there is only death at Gronder, but now Felix is here, somehow, and he...

It does not matter. It should not matter. It changes nothing.

"Stay _out_ of my way," Dimitri warns. 

His chest stutters and singes and sings anyway, traitorous. Felix…

The fog in Dimitri’s head is too thick. The path is too narrow. It is too late. 

They are going to kill him here. Because that is the only way he will be stopped.

Dimitri squeezes Areadbhar tighter, watches his hands drop it into the mud, watches himself take a step, another, a dozen, closing the distance and tearing out Felix’s throat, or punching through his ribcage with a clawed hand, or leaning down to cradle his head and - it is too late, too late, too late, there is _no time,_ he stands there, he does nothing.

Dimitri’s heart sits swollen and heavy in his chest. Areadbhar weighs unyielding and cold in his hands.

"You ungrateful, rabid beast," Felix snaps, and ghosts of all his other insults echo around him. "You don't even know how we…" _‘how I…’_ He cuts himself off and shakes his head, decisive. "I will _not_ allow you to waste all our effort like this." He points his bloodied sword at Dimitri's throat. "Stand down, animal."

Effort? What effort?

He left him to _die._

Dimitri snarls - if Felix insists on calling him that, he will play the part. He turns and takes off towards the red banners, vaguely aware of Felix hurrying after him. It does not matter - what is one more audience member? 

He hears Felix call out to someone, his voice grabbed and lifted by the wind before Dimitri can care to make out the words. Glenn - Glenn is here again - is half a step behind him, teeth gleaming when Dimitri chances a glance back. There is a length of white wool over his eyes, two coins on top of it, ready for the burning raft. He does not see Felix behind him. There is always only one Fraldarius son.

Dimitri climbs the command hill, almost slipping several times, pushing himself up with a hand. He sees individual figures now, hazy in the smoke, trembling with a myriad gestures and turns. An eruption of claws and smoke against the sky marks Edelgard; a wire of searing pain pulls across the back of Dimitri’s neck, drags forward through it. He growls it away. He looks for the others, for where there is a wound, there is pus. He finds them at her side.

Something blooms in Dimitri’s mind at the recognition, unfolding like webbed wings or poison spreading through veins. He sees now what is going to happen: von Hevring throws a blast of Wind, icy and sharp, to slow him down - usually misses. Rancid wisps of dark magic seep from von Vestra’s wrist tattoo into a volley that is meant to blind him and - _ah_ \- usually hits.

Dimitri blinks rapidly, clearing away the non-vision; regains the ground of a missed step, twists Areadbhar to pierce a man clean through. Pain unfolds below his right shoulder blade in what feels like an arrow hit - real or not? The banners are so close now, he can make out the eagles’ burning eyes on them, their parody of flight mocking the flocks of crows already looking for easy feed.

Vultures, all of them.

But the greatest vulture keeps her feet planted on the ground, a defiant look on her hated face.

Father leans close to Dimitri’s ear. His rasping breath smells like smoke and charred flesh, hits Dimitri’s face with a wave of smoldering heat. “Kill her.”

Edelgard’s personal guard notices him; the banners turn. The eyes of the eagles are trained on him, and Dimitri raises Areadbhar in a parody of a salute. Then charges.

Von Hevring hesitates for half a second, and Dimitri jerks out of the way. He is winded from the times he finds his resolve quickly enough, singed from the times he goes for Fire instead. Von Hevring is lucky to have so many people between them. He is lucky not to be Dimitri's mission.

A guard sprints at him with his axe raised, but Dimitri meets it easily, twisting Areadbhar until the man’s wrist cracks and the axe goes tumbling downhill. The guard’s corpse follows it a second later.

An incantation reaches Dimitri’s ears, followed by the sound of people running at him, and he turns to brace himself against it, to meet them head on, but it is too late.

A whirlpool of pain spreads out from his eyeball, and the darkness descends again, the inky, unnatural hue of it, engulfing his vision and pressing down on his temples. Dimitri lets out a roar and swings blindly, catching someone with Areadbhar and losing his balance, staggering and falling down on one knee. Pain bursts across his back, setting his whole body on fire - the tearing sensation of jagged metal snagging on armour and pushing on, regardless, until it sinks into flesh. 

Dimitri struggles back up and is hit again, a blade driving into his armpit - his heart stutters from the times it is grazed, but the angle is off. He falls to both knees now, and mud coats his armour, crawling up, claiming him for the earth. Another starburst of pain in his back - then another, another, the heat of them blurring into a heavy blanket.

He leans on his hands for support, remembering at the last moment to unclench his fingers and drop Areadbhar - they are crushed by the lance and the weight of his armoured body from the times he forgets.

More spears come. The angle is easier for them now that he is on the ground, the leverage better.

What is next? What comes after this?

It hurts to breathe. Oh Goddess, it hurts to breathe.

He hears someone shouting behind him, their voice hoarse and pitched high, panicked, furious; the meaty, clanging sounds of fighting. He feels the arrows - the _spears_ \- arraying out of his body like grotesque spines, feels their phantom brothers where they struck in different places, at different angles, feels them vibrate between his muscles and ribs, the thundering of many feet sending shocks from the ground through his body and into the shafts. 

He feels another stab, a slash, a blow; someone grabs onto the end of one spear and _pushes,_ skewering him further, the last of his air sizzling out from a punctured lung, and he cannot fight back, he cannot move, he cannot tell them to stop. His body is held together, held in place by the unyielding lines of metal and wood.

Dimitri slowly lifts his face - his head feels so heavy, his spine is cracking from the effort - and Edelgard is there, she is right there, and for a moment it looks like she is walking towards him, but then the decision is made and she allows von Vestra to usher her away. Her eyes meet Dimitri’s for a second, but he is in too much pain to decipher the emotion in them, his vision is too blurry, reeling from the blinding magic or just giving up along with the rest of his body. He chokes out a cough, sucks in a useless breath. Edelgard is leaving.

Edelgard is leaving, and he is on the ground, and he cannot move. Reality closes in, merciless, pressing against him with every wheezing breath, molding itself to the shape of his dying body.

He has failed. He is going to die, and Edelgard is leaving. Has already left.

So this is how it truly ends, then.

Dimitri falls down on his elbows, barely registering the jolt the movement sends through the mess of bones and blood and flesh. The air around him grows dark again, with an odd sense of finality to it. The ghosts wail, calling out to him, cursing his name.

Someone - Father? Glenn? Dedue? - spits on him, grinds the heel of his boot into the back of Dimitri’s neck. He is pushed into the ground, tears squeezed between his eyelids.

Faerghus is going to fall, and he could not protect anyone, he could never protect anyone. Faerghus is going to fall, and this is his fault. He gave it his all, and it was not enough.

He gave it his all.

Shameful relief floods Dimitri, stealing the very last of his breath. He lets it, relaxes into the guilty feeling of it. Lets go - for the first time in years. They cannot keep torturing him now, cannot force him into anything anymore. He did all he could.

“I’m sorry,” he mouths around a bloody, swollen tongue. “I’m sorry.”

His hearing is mercifully starting to dim, muffling the clang of weapons and the curses of the dead. Nothing lies ahead: the darkness caressing his eyes is soft and undisturbed, welcoming, like a grave’s warm embrace.

Nothing awaits. He is finally going to rest.

Dimitri lets his eye slip closed.

*

*

*

Death hurts. 

That is what Dimitri was not expecting. Dying was painful, of course - beyond words or any semblance of comprehension, really - but the fact that death itself is not a reprieve…

In his single-minded desire for rest, Dimitri was foolish to forget, of course, that there was nothing awaiting him but the eternal flames. He should have known better.

His entire body feels set on fire, throbbing with aches so numerous that he fails to discern where one ends and the next begins. He does not even _have_ a body anymore, but the flames crawl into the grooves of his naked, shivering soul like venomous snakes. If he still had joints, they would be sizzling open, mixing their clear fluid with blood. If he had skin, it would be shredded and flayed, a map of suffering painted across it in broken blood vessels.

If Dimitri could cry, he would. He desires so desperately to cease being.

_‘Shhh,’_ a voice reaches him, cotton-soft, muffled; the fibers of it grate on his festering wounds. _‘Shh, rest, rest.’_

Dimitri writhes in misery, exhausted beyond any hope for relief. Oh how he _wishes_ to…

Goddess, please let him rest, please just let him _rest…_

Something burns against his chest, brighter and more acidic than any other pain, pushes a weak, hoarse cry up his throat.

The burn winks out as suddenly as it appeared, and its imprint blooms black against Dimitri’s soul. He feels the tendrils of it spiral out and out and out until they engulf his entire being and _contract,_ thicker and coarser than vines, slithering and slick.

If Dimitri still had lungs, he would gasp from the sheer pressure of it. His head suddenly feels fit to burst - and in a flash of terror he recognizes this kind of pain.

Images spill over, flood him in a gurgle of shadows and faces, fingers tightening around hilts and hems and heads. Suffocating, shimmering pressure of desert sunlight; a hand, a simple ring on it, the touch of skin feather-light; a twisted and terrible creature towering against the webbing fractures of a tinted window, wearing a pale, frightened face, framed by paler hair; the same face, teeth shining as its lips are pulled back in a strained, gleeful grimace.

A face he knows too well.

A face that changes into an older one, grows long and gaunt, crowned with elaborate braids. Stepmother stoops her monstrous, morbid body down, levels her eyes with Dimitri’s. The stench of her breath is unspeakable.

“Watch,” she tells him; she is as grotesquely beautiful as death itself. “Watch, foolish child.”

The stream of visions speeds up, blurring and cramming itself into Dimitri’s head. The images flash by too quickly, too violently for him to discern anything, but he knows, oh Goddess, he _knows_ with the certainty of earth splitting beneath his feet: this is not the end, yet. The fight is not over. He is not done.

The pressure _hurts,_ pushing on the backs of his eyeballs, and Dimitri thrashes away from it, tries to strike out but he has no hands - or does he? If this is not over - if there is more to it - then he must still be alive. He must have a body.

He is so weak. So torn. So indescribably tired. His ravaged soul is dragged, crying, over the blurry threshold of wakefulness.

Something thick and tingling pours into Dimitri’s mouth, invades his throat against his feeble resistance. Dimitri sputters and gags and retches, panicked, his every nerve scrubbed raw. 

Dimitri can feel his skull cracking with the avalanche of visions still flooding his mind. After the brief reprieve of silence, they are deafening.

A touch to his brow - fades - is replaced with a slap - that fades too. There is a pressure around his chest, then along his front, firm and dense. It changes into something jagged and sharp, then into the squelch of mud, then back into flat firmness again, all within moments. A crackle of Translocation magic grabs at his limbs, lets them drop listlessly again. He tries to hold on to it, to anything, but his hands will not comply, heavy, covered with something. His gauntlets - where are his gauntlets?

Dimitri attempts to force his eyes open, but he cannot even do that much. He is helpless, defenseless, lost, but the ghosts will not understand, will whip and beat and abuse him until he does their bidding - or until his body gives out.

He feels something pitiful and hot slide from his eye and down his nose. A hand touches his skin, soothing, but he cannot be consoled, not by touch, not by anything.

Voices thread themselves through the visions, unclear, a sighing brush of wind against whispering leaves.

_‘...give him something? He’s in so much pain, do something...!’_

_‘I’ve used everything I could, the only spell remaining would be…’_

_‘Then do it, for Sothis’s sake! Can’t you see…’_

The voices sound familiar, vaguely so, but Dimitri cannot place them, does not have the energy to even want to try. The meaning is clear enough, anyway: something in the future spells out pain, but it is a superfluous warning - as if he would not know otherwise.

A cool numbness is planted in the middle of his back and slowly begins to spill outwards, flowing down the length of his body and up into his head. Dimitri observes it with detachment, noting passively as the perception of his broken body narrows down and down and down until it feels, again, like he has no body at all. He releases a sigh from his abstract lungs and is, in turn, released from the burden of consciousness.

*

The first thing Dimitri becomes aware of when he is capable of awareness at all is, unsurprisingly, pain yet again. His entire body throbs in a light, pattering way of blood spread too thin. The sensation feels separate from him, softened, muted. It is probably going to hurt a lot when he wakes fully - he does not feel excited about the prospect of it. 

He is so sluggish, dulled like a weapon left to rust in a swamp.

The visions are the second thing he becomes aware of. They crowd the back of his mind like overeager, unwanted visitors, and grow agitated now that he is nearing wakefulness again.

Dimitri tries to brace himself against them, but they tear through his flimsy defenses like a pack of hounds baying for blood. He has no choice but to pay attention...

People, hundreds of them, pale, their angles sharp with emaciation, tearing into each other’s flesh like rabid rats. Dimitri is reminded of Remire, but this is not it, not a memory, this is - so much bigger.

A man - he knows him, he has thought about him already, a name struggles up from the billowing depths - Arundel - but his dark hair grows sleek and white and his skin sags under pupil-less eyes. He reaches out a gnarly hand towards Dimitri, fingers clawed and poised to grab. Dimitri startles away from him.

Seas and seas of ghostly soldiers, brittle bones poking through rotting meat - they are supposed to be dead, why are they not dead? Each walking corpse is a warped, mocking challenge to the law of life, an abomination filled with so much wrongness that Dimitri’s teeth ache at the sight.

A cathedral, its doorways bathed in a sickly green light, its spires and arches barely visible in the thick shadows - it feels like there is no sky above it at all, though that surely cannot be true.

A skeletal hand with parchment-thin skin stretched taut over the knuckles, impervious and imperious. Resting on a shoulder clad in red.

_...Her._ It is her again. The Alliance army has failed, just as Dimitri has, which means his duty remains unfulfilled. Which leaves him tethered to this punctured body, to this bleeding earth.

Like those soldiers, Dimitri should be dead, too. He should be dead - he was ready to die at Gronder, he _welcomed_ the catharsis of silence that came with it, the promise of laying down his weapons after finishing the job. He welcomed the quiet, echoless relief of a candle flame winking out after being shaken by the turmoil of winds for far too long.

If only he did it right. If only he ended it all there. The one thing he had to do - the one that he was so sure would happen - and he could not do it. And then, he could not even die.

Instead, Dimitri has been saved by something - someone - he did not expect to see again. The abyss of Gronder was so echoless and vast that Dimitri - simply could not see past it. Mistook it for a sign that there was nothing _to_ see.

And what is happening now feels like a physical weight returning to hang around his neck, on his back, familiar shackles clamping down on his wrists and ankles. Every move - every intention to move, even - is dictated by the length of the chains, by their heavy ridges biting into his skin.

If the Goddess is merciful, Dimitri will never wake up. He will waste away, fade, leave the blinding circle of light that so far has caused him nothing but losses - of his friends, his sight, his sanity. Leave it to someone else. 

But there _is_ no one else. Dimitri is the only one with the blooming knowledge of all that is going to happen if the job is not done. The only one who knows the true price of failure. 

Gronder was a lie. It was all a lie. As long as Edelgard lives, so must he.

The thought sits bitter in the back of Dimitri’s throat. He is tired, tired, _tired._ He will get up and take up arms again, eventually, for he has no other choice, but right now there is nothing but the endless, breathless exhaustion.

It is with this numb resignation that Dimitri breaks the surface of waking. He is lying on his front, the right side of his face pressed into a mattress. The coarse fabric of it smells musty and old.

He shifts a little, trying to judge the give of the chains. Something is constricting his movement, something outside of the bone-deep fatigue or the paralyzing weight of visions, and after a long moment of rummaging in his few memories Dimitri realizes it must be bandages. Someone patched him up. Someone carried him off the field. Someone - did not allow him to die. Who?

Lifting his eyelid proves to be a monumental effort. The lashes have all crusted up together, and it almost does not feel worth the uncomfortable pull. But he _needs_ to see, drowning in the knowledge of all that is to come, yet adrift in the present.

It is Felix.

He is sitting in a chair across the room - Dimitri vaguely notices the dull brown of the stone walls, old, strangely familiar - and his hair looks different, and he is still dressed in the asymmetrical blue-green coat that Glenn was wearing when… But no, it was not Glenn, was it? It was Felix, there, on the battlefield, screaming at Dimitri to stand down. Glenn never screams, Glenn always grows up so calm and collected, the easy stance of his body a natural expression and not a pretense…

Dimitri blinks slowly, clearing away the double vision. Only one, always only one.

Felix’s eyes are trained on him, he notices. He looks…wary. Displeased. It echoes, as it often used to, Dimitri’s own sentiments. He _has_ failed, after all. At the one thing he needed to do.

But _why_ is Felix here?

If opening his eye was hard, speaking is nigh impossible. His throat feels full of rubble and mud, and it takes him several attempts to dislodge it enough to force a sound through.

“Felix?” he asks, just to make sure. Grit crunches on his teeth, hair is falling into his eye - it feels lighter, softer. Someone must have washed it, combed it out.

A shiver passes through him at the thought. He does not want to be touched.

Felix blinks, shifts in his seat. Both his feet are planted firmly on the ground, ready to bear his weight at a moment’s notice, a warrior’s reflex.

“You’re awake,” he finally says.

Dimitri thinks it over. “Mhm.” The side of his mouth rubs against the bedsheet; he can feel the cool moisture from where it must have absorbed his saliva. He notes it with defeated indifference. “Are you…here to watch over me?”

Felix leans back a fraction and scoffs.

“Don’t flatter yourself, boar. I’m just here to make sure there’s someone,” _\- 'to put you back under,' - 'to take ca...' -_ "to put you down, if you wake up and decide to go on a bloody rampage.”

Felix flexes the fingers of his ungloved hand; lightning crackles along the joints, leans into his caress like a small creature looking for affection. There is a small sigil tattoo on the inside of his wrist. Dimitri does not remember Felix ever paying attention in magic classes the few times he has actually attended them - this must be new, although he has always been partial to showing off.

Then again - Dimitri does not remember a lot of things. Try as he might to hold onto them, the rags of his memory always seem to slip through his fingers.

Dimitri considers responding, but what use would it be? As if he is fit for a rampage anyway. Too tired, too tired, too tired. How is he going to continue this fight? 

“M’tired,” he breathes instead, just so that someone _knows,_ and it comes out thin and forlorn.

A crooked thing pulls at a corner of Felix’s mouth, and for a moment he looks - younger, something not so rigidly stern poking out from behind his trusty shield of anger. But the moment passes too quickly, so it might have simply been a vision.

“I’m surprised you’re even talking - Marianne pumped you full of healing spells and finished it off with a Knockout,” Felix says and pauses for a second. “You don’t need to be awake,” he adds quietly, glancing idly to the side - Dimitri does not have the energy to check what is there, can only look at Felix. “You _will_ have to be, eventually, but right now it’s alright.”

The thought of sleeping forever is so tempting, but the call of the dead thrums under Dimitri’s skin, warns of the horrors rearing to consume the waking world. Could he, truly? Could he afford it?

“I might,” Dimitri concedes; the world is already growing dim in agreement. “Would you stay?” he tries to ask - a foolish, childish notion, really - but he is already slipping under and does not know if the words manage to reach Felix’s ears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- war-related violence: a soldier gets cleaved in half, Dimitri gets porcupined  
> \- violent visions: a couple of instances of Dimitri tearing into Felix, but i thiiiink that should be about it?


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They said you were executed," Felix says suddenly, and his tone is - a burr on the edge of an axe, a swing, a nameless funeral pyre, ashes doused with rainwater.
> 
> The air grows empty and cold, crystallizes in Dimitri's lungs as he pulls it in. A chasm opens underneath him. 
> 
> "I think I was," he confesses quietly into it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is actually pretty mild in terms of CWs! violent visions of the usual kind, but that is it.

_how would we know what leaves are,_

_if all the trees have been cut down for timber?_

_how would we know what war is,_

_if we have never known peace?_

The next several days crawl by in a haze. Dimitri learns that he is in the infirmary of Garreg Mach, and after that the familiarity of the room falls into place. He learns that he was picked up by the Alliance army, and that the monastery has been made into its headquarters. 

Marianne von Edmund tends to him, changes his bandages and pours spell after spell into the puckering craters of wounds on his back and chest and stomach. She refuses to meet his eye and barely speaks to him, save for directions to sit up or turn and questions about his well-being, but her narrow hands are steady and warm when she conjures strands of healing light and directs them into his burning flesh. 

Not that Dimitri minds the silence. He would not know what to talk about with Marianne anyway while she insists on wasting healing magic on him. He hates needing this help, but his growls of irritation and warning leave her undeterred.

Something lurks in Marianne’s pointy profile, something scaly and venomous hiding under her skin like a rumble in the dark, and her future spells sorrow, and the beast recognizes another beast.

“I need my gauntlets,” Dimitri rasps as soon as he is lucid enough to be capable of coherent thought.

“There is magic woven into them, isn’t that so?” Marianne says quietly, weathers his glare with her eyes securely on the weave of another healing spell. “I saw your hands. That’s...a lot of old damage.”

“Give them to me,” Dimitri attempts to sound imperious, but his unused voice cracks and breaks off into something desperate. What would make her comply? “I need them.”

Marianne glances at him then - a rabbit-quick thing, there and gone in an instant - but leaves the room and comes back with the gauntlets, cleaned and polished and wrapped in a length of bleached cloth. She brings his eyepatch, too, and asks him about the damage to his eye, but Dimitri refuses to speak - would not be able to even if he wanted to, grief fusing his jaws together.

Since his first shred of lucidity returned, Dimitri has kept his hands under the blankets at all times, struck with the old, long-ingrained paranoia that someone might see, that _Felix_ might see. But Felix has not come by since...since Dimitri woke up here for the first time, probably. Except for Marianne’s, who already knows what his hands look like, the only face Dimitri gets to see is Seteth’s. He comes in, once, and gives him a speech on treating his territory with respect, and smells of isolation and vigilance and algae burning in the sun when the tide is low. 

Outside of Marianne’s visits, Dimitri spends most of his time sleeping, barely gets up, does not venture from the room. The door is not locked - he has checked - but he has no interest in the world on its other side, for now. He hears voices sometimes, but they are fainter and more faraway than his visions and ghosts, and thus cannot hold his attention. Old, scratched memories of students, screams echoing through waterfalls of rocks cascading into mossy ruins, shadows and whispers, light-footed, light-fingered.

Dimitri will take his time to recover. Then, he will leave for Enbarr. There is no reason to delay any more than he absolutely needs for his wounds to scar over. Now that he has failed to do what he had to, his way lies south.

A fortnight passes, more or less - even with the constant stream of spells and salves, Dimitri’s laughable body heals at a disgustingly slow rate. Eventually, new scar tissue starts stretching over Dimitri’s wounds, shiny and stiff, but his body tires too quickly, still in shock from the experience of holding hands with death. Dimitri made exactly one attempt to train, antsy from the forced idleness after the long time spent on the run, but collapsed on the stone floor and had to crawl back into bed, bruised in both body and ego and laughed at by Father, as soon as he could gather enough strength to move. 

The food is not helping. Not that it tastes bad - Dimitri would not know the difference anyway, and few things would be worse than what he has subsisted on for the past several years. But there is a lot of it, and it is as if his stomach has been roused from its starving slumber and remembered what being full feels like. Dimitri is _constantly_ hungry, but hunger exhausts him, and eating exhausts him, and digesting exhausts him as well. He tries to bank his appetite, to tire the hunger into a hibernating silence again, but that only makes him nauseous and dizzy, and Marianne does not conceal her disapproval when she looks at the harsh lines of his ribs.

His armour is returned to him - not just the gauntlets. Areadbhar, too. A new set of clothes, to replace Dimitri’s threadbare rags. Even his cloak. The armour has been cleaned and buffed, but he still spends hours obsessively polishing every piece of it now that he is forced to wait anyway, a prisoner of his healing flesh.

Eventually, Felix pays him a visit again. Dimitri is sitting up on his cot and flipping idly through a book he has pulled from one of the scarcely filled shelves, when he arrives at the door and opens it so quietly that Dimitri does not notice him - until he turns his head and recognizes the black patch that stays when the blindness moves away as Felix’s turtleneck.

“Felix,” Dimitri greets him with faint surprise, matching his face up against his memories and ghosts. Is it truly Felix? Or is this Glenn? If it is Felix, then is he really here?

Felix walks away, and the door is left open. Felix does not leave, but leans against the doorjamb. Felix does not leave, but does not come closer, either. Felix...

“Boar,” Felix replies. After a stilted moment, he steps into the infirmary and closes the door behind him.

Really Felix, then. Here to see him after a fortnight of absence. Dimitri does not want to feel in any way about this, but something still pulls at him, at his heavy chest. 

It is so strange, seeing Felix again after so many years - Dimitri does not count the delirium of Gronder and the days immediately after, as he could barely focus on anything except for Edelgard, and duty, and pain, but now he can actually _look_. Felix’s hair is shorter, and his posture is stiffer, and his clothes make him look so much like Glenn that Dimitri has to keep blinking to clear his vision. 

He is older, now - the adolescent sharpness in him has given way to tempered steel. Dimitri wonders what he looks like to him.

The pause stretches. Dimitri clears his throat. “You going to sit?”

Something catches Dimitri’s eye as he watches Felix cross the room to the same chair he sat in the first time. 

“You are limping,” he notes. Is it an old injury? A recent wound? He does not remember Felix getting irreversibly hurt, but - it _has_ been years… How many - five, now?

Felix wrinkles his nose as he lowers himself into the chair. “An astute observation.” It does not seem like he intends to say more, but then he glances in Dimitri’s direction and must notice the wary look on his face. “It’s nothing,” his frown deepens. “Got distracted.”

Recent, then. Gronder is a misty haze - was Felix limping when Dimitri saw him on the battlefield? When he walked over and - but no, that did not happen.

_Why_ was he there? Why did he follow Dimitri to the command hill? Why did he…

“Why were you there?” he asks, the hook of the question tearing through his sternum and up. He half-expects blood to gurgle from his throat in its wake.

Felix glances at him and away again, looks out of the window.

"They said you were executed," he says suddenly, and his tone is - a burr on the edge of an axe, a swing, a nameless funeral pyre, ashes doused with rainwater.

The air grows empty and cold, crystallizes in Dimitri's lungs as he pulls it in. A chasm opens underneath him. 

"I think I was," he confesses quietly into it. 

The silence billows, a shadow over still, freezing water. The pain of being alive is insurmountable.

“I tracked you down from Faerghus,” Felix says. The chasm implodes soundlessly, like a filled grave. Above it, his eyes narrow a fraction. “Claude heard through his channels that someone was destroying imperials but leaving Faerghans alone. The description was vague but rang a bell.” Felix shrugs, the nonchalant motion at odds with the hardened monotone of his voice. “As a native, I was the obvious choice to go and investigate. But then you beelined south, so I caught up with you at Gronder.”

His voice is deeper now. It is rough around the edges, as if not broken in properly from too little use. The rumble of it vibrates in Dimitri’s chest.

This is not what Dimitri asked, and, still winded, he opens his mouth as he considers asking again when Claude pokes his head into the room.

“Knock kno-ock? I heard my name!”

He steps in casually, with an easy grin on his face, like he owns the place - though it is likely he actually does, now, headquarters and all.

“Felix, there you are. Leonie was looking to spar, if you’re in the mood,” Claude walks over to another chair and pulls it up and around so he can straddle it, facing Dimitri. “And how is our Sleeping Prince doing?”

Dimitri almost misses the question, too focused on the way Felix’s face relaxes in Claude’s presence, on the small harmless smirk he gives Claude in response, the ease of his eye contact. Something like jealousy coils in his stomach, but Dimitri presses down on it. He is not entitled to any of Felix’s loyalty. He is not sure he ever was - but certainly not the way he is now.

Claude has grown too, with his hair slicked back and the angles of his face both fuller with maturity and sharper with stress. Dimitri recognizes the lines it leaves, has seen those lines in his own face back when he still cared about his conduct and presentation enough to look into the polished mirrors: the stress of responsibility, and duty, and nights of too little sleep.

Claude is a von Riegan. Does that mean that he leads the Leicester Alliance now?

A shimmering flow of visions is surrounding Claude, future impressions of sand and linen and steel, and looking too closely threatens Dimitri with a sharp stab of headache, forcing him to glance away. Abruptly, he remembers that he has been spoken to. 

“I am - well,” he responds.

Goddess, will speaking ever feel natural again?

“Excellent.” Did Claude just wink? “Marianne told me you’re being an almost exemplary patient.”

Claude makes a complicated gesture to underline his words. His right arm is hanging in a sling against his chest, but that does not seem to bother him: his left arm more than makes up for its immobilized twin. 

Claude’s eyes are still on Dimitri, attentive and assessing, even as he continues speaking.

“We’ve made Garreg Mach into our base, as you can see - for when we’re in the area, at least. Tugging the troops to and fro after every battle makes no sense, but it does offer a decent vantage point,” Claude stretches out his limbs idly one by one, careful not to jostle the sling. “It is only _sort of_ on the way this time, but I figured we all could use a break - and after all, Garreg Mach _is_ easy to find. But we’re marching again soon.”

Dimitri loses the thread without any hope to recover it, as if he wandered into the middle of a conversation without any warning. He has spent too much time with only his ghosts for company, the acquaintance of men fleeting and gory. This is too much, too fast. 

‘Easy to find’? What does that mean? By who? Why would that be a good thing?

“How are you going to draw your bow like this?” Dimitri goes for a simpler question instead. Claude is a bowman… Right? He was, at least, was he not? He almost always favours the bow, except for when he goes for the axe instead...

Claude smiles. “Your sentiment is touching, but ultimately unnecessary, I have more than enough time to heal until then. Your grand performance as a porcupine _kind of_ took priority, healers-wise.”

Dimitri furrows his brow, too tired to bristle. 

"Another sacrifice so that you'd live," Father's grin is a coil around the whispered words. "You'd better hurry and get to her before he joins our company. He looks like he'd have a lot to say."

Dimitri shakes his head abruptly. Something must show on his face because Claude’s eyes narrow in contemplation, but the next moment he relaxes again in what looks like a practiced movement; the fingers of his right hand twitch, as if setting something aside.

“I must say, you gave us all a scare, Your Princeliness,” he leans to the side in his chair, propping up an elbow on its back. “Felix here was fighting like a man possessed when I arrived, I actually homed in on the mound of bodies he was piling up.”

Dimitri looks over when Felix makes a strangled noise, his face growing red. He is glaring at Claude like he is seconds away from whipping out his sword - or both. He carries two of them now.

Claude notices it too and laughs, holding up a hand in a placating gesture. “Oh come on, you know I’m right!” He turns back to Dimitri again. “All in all, it was an epic and daring escape, but honestly, you were lucky I was close by. Félicité is about the only wyvern in our army that can lift off the ground with two riders _and_ a dead weight. While being shot at.”

‘Dead weight’ is probably accurate; Dimitri does not remember that part at all, no matter how deeply he cuts his fingers as he gropes around in the darkness. A vision is offered to him instead: a white wyvern succumbing to the storm of arrows, dropping bodies from its back as it spirals down. Why did Claude save him? What good is it to him?

He eyes Claude warily, pointedly.

Claude is so deliberately relaxed, so perfectly at ease. He shakes his head with a crooked smile as if Dimitri caught him on something. “I’m not gonna lie. Your presence - you being alive in the first place - _really_ makes it easier for me, in the grand scheme of things.”

That makes it one of them.

“‘Scheme’,” Dimitri repeats, tilting his head.

“A turn of phrase,” Claude waves a dismissive hand. “I’ll tell you all you need to know in due time, don't worry your shaggy head. Trust me that I’ve got everyone's best interests at heart.”

Dimitri lowers his head. His bark of a laugh echoes in his head from the times he has any strength to let it out. It is - a challenge, to believe words like that. A challenge not worth accepting, in his experience.

But in the corner of his eye, he notices Felix dip his head in a nod to himself as he seems momentarily lost in thought. 

“Alright,” Claude slaps his knee and gets up, looking between them. “I won’t keep you two from catching up any longer. _But,”_ he points at Dimitri, “we will talk. Don’t go anywhere.”

Silence falls after Claude leaves. Felix still looks distinctly uncomfortable, and Dimitri suddenly does not know what to do. He suppresses a sigh of sudden frustration: why is he here?

“What did he mean by Garreg Mach being easy to find?” Once again, Dimitri opts for a simpler question. A question he actually has a chance of getting an answer to that he might understand.

“I sent letters to summon people here,” Felix responds. Scowls at something on the hem of his turtleneck, scrubs at it with a fingernail. “Sylvain, Ingrid, Annette, Mercedes…”

“Why?” The word slips out before Dimitri can check himself. Why would anyone come here? Why now?

Felix almost looks offended at the interruption as he stares at him with the same level of disdain he was just regarding his hem with. “Uniting the troops,” he says, like it should be so obvious it physically pains him to voice it. “Centralized attacks instead of guerilla resistance. Rally behind the rightful heir and all that.” His lip curls. “We’re at _war,_ in case you haven’t noticed.”

Ah. 

There is a question Felix wants to ask - almost asks it here. _‘Why did you not come to us?’_

It is lucky, then, that Felix does not bother asking. Dimitri has no answer for him. The past five years - he has been as good as dead. Whoever told Felix that he had been executed was not wrong.

Felix does not seem to believe in his own words - that is clear from the way he speaks them. Does not believe in Dimitri, either. Which is - nothing new, of course, a worry of an ancient wound, one Dimitri has almost forgotten even existed.

Do they expect him to lead? _Him?_ The way he is?

To what end?

Felix frowns as something catches his attention. “I don’t have a lead on Dedue. Neither does Claude.”

A hand closes around Dimitri’s throat, another trails down his chest. Boulders beat him into the ground, crush his ribcage like bird bones. The world grows darker and narrower.

“Dedue is dead,” he whispers into the tight space, around half a flutter of air.

“What?” Another stone dropping down on him, but by now, what is one more?

“Dedue is _dead,”_ Dimitri repeats, louder. Grief rises in him like a wave, fills his lungs, bubbles in black between the abrupt arches of his ribs. The darkness beneath Fhirdiad claims him, the void of Gronder claims him, he should not be here, he should have fallen then. “And I should be dead, too. Why did you save me?”

The one question that really matters.

Why does he get to live but Dedue does not? Why does his curse mean that he must outlast those who deserve living so much more than he ever could? Why can he not be the sole victim of it, the sole puppet in the hands of fate? If someone must suffer because of it, why can he not be the only one?

Dimitri is bleeding and bleeding and _bleeding_ and it will not stop. He is so, so tired of dragging corpses behind him.

Felix’s face, when Dimitri can push back against the weight enough to lift his head, is suspended in something too complicated to decipher before his eyes narrow in anger.

“You did die there,” he spits. “You _were_ dead, we had to- Fuck it. You are fucking welcome.” He cuts himself off, and gets up, and storms out of the room.

Something tugs at Dimitri’s ruined chest, pulls him after Felix - and he almost calls out to him, almost hears his own voice, a drop of ink spidering out in the water, words of reconciliation or words of anger - and Felix comes back, Felix does not come back, Felix yells and curses and stays eerily silent - but the moment passes, and he sags in his cot, weighed down by the morose pointlessness of it. The pulling sensation strains and shivers and snaps, and something freezes in Dimitri in response. He only feels tired. His chest is empty, and his heart is unbeating and cold.

Why did it have to be him? Why could not someone stronger than him, better than him, more honourable than him be tasked with this? There are so many people who would do a great job, who would be able to wield this weapon without burying it in their own guts, without taking off innocent heads. Dedue - Dedue would have done so well… But Dedue already had so much on his shoulders, his whole life, from the cursed day his path crossed Dimitri’s hell-bound one - and now he is gone. 

Dimitri winces, but it is too late to brace himself against the blow of mourning. 

In the end, if the bearer of the curse is doomed to such a miserable ‘life’ as his is, he would much rather it be him than Dedue or anybody else - if only he could find a way not to bring other people to harm.

But that will be achieved once Edelgard is dead. Once his duty is fulfilled. Then, there will be no more need in these visions, or the ill-fated soul that carries them. Then, he will not harm anyone else.

Soon, Marianne deems Dimitri healthy enough not to require her continuous care, and Dimitri is invited to move back into the dormitories, of all places. He does not know if it is the power of habit that compels Claude’s people to return to their old nests or something else, but he does not care enough to ask.

One of the Deer escorts him - Leonie - what was her surname? - and she is idly twirling a spear as they walk, pretending to be - uninterested? unbothered? unafraid? Dimitri knows his way to the rooms anyway, but if they trust him enough to stay behind the unlocked infirmary door but not to walk across the monastery grounds - he does not care enough to argue, either.

He is not their prisoner, that is clear. But who _is_ he? What do they want?

Dimitri stops short in front of his old room, pushes the door open - it creaks on unoiled hinges. There is still a crack in the wall from when he punched it, disappearing into the thick mass of stone.

The corners of his abandoned cold lair seem to grow darker, alerted to his presence. Shadows spill from the stonework like dozens of thin, disfigured hands, fingers probing the space around them, looking for a weakness.

Dimitri lifts his foot over the threshold, swallows, puts it back down. Turns and walks the rest of the corridor’s length, entering Sylvain’s room instead, feeling Leonie’s eyes on the back of his head. Whatever memories this room keeps, he would much rather weather those.

*

The next morning, Dimitri runs into Felix. He does not _search_ for him, and doubts that Felix bothers deliberately avoiding him either, but the monastery is so big and has changed so much that Dimitri struggles to match up its layout against his fragmented memory. The Reception Hall and their old classrooms have been sectioned off into makeshift infirmaries, and rows of tents sprawl in the overgrown and then trampled courtyards and along the soapy pond. Instead of students, the monastery is full of knights, and messengers, and bannermen, and camp followers.

He finds Felix outside the caved-in cathedral, on its western walkway, leaning onto the wide stone railing. Beyond the monastery trees, down in the sunlit valley where the army has set up its camp alongside the villages, squadrons of wyvern riders twirl through the air as they perform their drills.

Should Dimitri speak? But of what? Or would it be wiser to let this lie?

But something always pulls him towards Felix, against his better judgement.

“Morning,” Dimitri calls out, keeping his voice low, and sees Felix turn his head just enough to throw him a cursory glance.

“Boar,” he says, in either greeting or exasperation. Maybe both.

But he is not attacking or stalking off, and Dimitri comes over to stand at the railing as well. He stays several steps away from Felix, not used to being close to people he has no intention of killing.

What is he supposed to say here?

“I don’t care what you have saved me for. It should not have been me.”

Enbarr or no, Edelgard or no, it should not be Dimitri standing here.

“Hmph,” Felix replies. Makes a complicated face, eyes still trained stubbornly on the wyverns.

Whatever inspiration Dimitri might have been hoping for, it has not struck.

He could apologize, of course, but what good would that do for either of them? He could thank Felix, but he would definitely hate that. Would know it not to be genuine - rightly so. 

So Dimitri stays where he is with his back straight, his eyes following the lines of the land rising into razor-sharp pikes of surrounding mountains. Their jagged edges fit poorly against the cutout of the sky.

“Don’t ruin it,” Felix speaks up suddenly; his arms are folded over the railing, and a hand flexes idly against the stone. “It was nice to see you finally honest, for a change.”

Dimitri swallows the sudden bitterness, a flare of old, tired frustration, the flow of a forgotten dance from another life. “Ah. Of course.”

Felix throws him a sideways glance, a flash of iron. “You’re...not what I expected you to be like. After everything.”

Dimitri stills, his limbs warming up in an impulse to fight or flee. He does not heed it, foolish as always. 

“What did you expect me to be like?”

“Unhinged,” Felix drops immediately, simply. The soft lining reveals the teeth of a bear trap as it snaps shut. “A lot more unhinged.”

The words ring and roll around Dimitri’s hollow chest cavity, knock against his healing ribs.

It hurts. Despite everything, it still hurts, damn it all to hell.

“I…” Dimitri begins, not knowing what he is trying to say, reeling so suddenly and so hard that by all laws of physics he should topple right over the railings. “I must go.”

Dimitri hears Felix hiss a sigh between clenched teeth as he retreats, as he carries his unraveling body away, somewhere he can put it down and let it tear at the seams under its own weight. His armour pulls him to the ground like a stiff cadaver hanging off his shoulders.

But the fact is - Felix is right, of course. For all the wrong reasons, but right, and the misplaced strike rings true - and Dimitri’s choices are to flee and hide or to stay and tear into Felix in return, and he cannot be bothered to pull his punches.

Dimitri places this hollow feeling now. The blind, feral rage that sustained him like a red-hot rod where his spine should be, that directed him like a needle pointing irreversibly south, that whipped him on like the inevitability of winter nightfall, is gone, the poison of it bled from the jagged punctures in his body. All that is left is a grim, hopeless, resigned determination, and if he must forge it into a steel cuirass to wear until the nearing day he falls, so be it. 

And if Felix expected him to be - _unhinged_ \- then what is one more expectation Dimitri could not live up to?

*

At noon, the Lions arrive. Like a change of wind before the tide comes in, they are preceded by scouts on foaming horses, and the patchwork of battalions down in the valley grows even more motley as fresh tents sprout across the plains. Finally, they spill through the main gates, people and horses cramming into the marketplace, crowding the merchants. Pegasi circle overhead, looking for a spot to land. 

The group still swells with the excitement of newly reunited, so they must have met up along the way, probably shortly before arriving at Garreg Mach. Dimitri watches from around the corner, his dark cloak and armour blending in with the shadows. In the bustle, nobody thinks to look in his direction, and he is free to observe. He is already feeling the stirrings of a headache behind his eyes, but is not sure if it is related to the visions rising above the people like a desert mirage or the sudden explosion of noise drilling into his skull.

Annette is at the front, swift-footed on the mountain paths that horses struggle to follow, confined instead to the wider roads. Dimitri is startled to see the haunted look in her eyes, even as she flies up the stairs and into the Entrance Hall with a grin splitting her face, calling out to Claude - he must be inside.

Dimitri sees…desperate sleepless nights, dusty tomes, casting spell after spell after helpless spell on an ugly, weeping wound, the stench of rot a dense, physical presence, pressing up close like an unwanted lover…

He looks away, breathes forcefully to clear his lungs.

Ashe enters next, and Mercedes, and they are holding a man between them by the elbows, assisting him to walk even as he tries to wave them off. They are trailed by a group in clerical robes and more wounded people, donkeys and mules laden with overflowing baskets and sacks. Ashe and Mercedes talk around their charge, breathless from the hike...

Breathless from the smoke reaching into their eyes and chests - Ashe is rushed by a man with a javelin, thrown off his feet, too close to ready an arrow - the javelin is driven through his throat and bursts into flames - Mercedes falls to her knees next to a wounded soldier to cast a spell and is knocked aside by the wing of a grounded wyvern as it struggles to lift again - from beyond a smoke screen, a war cry comes, a wicked, guttural thing, heralding pain and death.

Dimitri throws himself behind the wall, leans forward to brace his hands against his thighs, his breathing coming in erratic, anxious gasps. Is this what awaits them? Is this what they are doomed to by coming here? By marching out into this war under a united banner? Felix called him ‘the rightful heir’ - is Dimitri the one to lead them to this gory fate?

Dimitri has a goal. He does not care about anything else. He _cannot_ care.

The hum of the headache heightens in pitch, pushes needles against his eyes. Dimitri should walk away while he can, should stop looking, but he - cannot, he needs to see, he needs to know.

More people flood the small square: officers, bannermen, squires, winded from the hike but elated to be at the end of their journey - and writhing and thrashing as blood escapes their bodies. 

A call rings from the halo of sunlight, and Ingrid lands an ivory pegasus onto a hastily cleared patch. Her hair has been hacked off, and her armour blazes a clear, thunderous white - and is scratched and dented and split open like a shell, and she fights, snarling around bloodied teeth, too proud and too fearsome and too fearful to become a war prize. 

Sylvain arrives closer to the end of the procession, bringing a whirlwind of - fire and broken bones and the sharp sensation of staring doom in the eye and taking the deliberate step forward - that cuts across Dimitri’s vision with a burning sting, and once his broad horse moves out of the way, Dimitri’s heart gives a singular frozen thud.

Rodrigue slides easily off his steed, spry and loose-limbed, but Dimitri does not see him there. Him, or his horse, or his banners. Rodrigue is in his arms instead, impaled on a glistening blade, and his mouth trickles blood as he is struggling to speak. Rain is coming down hard, a great unraveling braid, a solid weight across Dimitri’s shoulders that is bowing him to the ground. A cutting pain in his back, flesh separated from bone by the slick slide of metal.

The noon sun is beating down on them, and Rodrigue is here, and he should not be alive.

Dimitri’s head explodes in sudden agony, he grasps uselessly at the breastplate, to take it off, to unclasp the back, to remove the blade...

But he does not have time to recover from this blow, because someone else steps up next to Rodrigue, leading his nervous, high-strung horse by the reins, and Dimitri’s world lurches to a halt.

Dedue.

Dedue, who - who should be _dead._ Who _was_ dead. He died, he - he _died,_ Dimitri _saw..._

Dimitri looks between the two men, who still have not noticed him - miraculously, none of the Lions have, none of the Deer who join them now in the square, too busy in the commotion of greetings and tears both relieved and apprehensive. He looks at them and his head is splitting messily at the seams and the cool stone wall against his shoulder is the only thing keeping him upright.

Someone - Ashe? - almost glances in his direction, and Dimitri heaves suddenly and stumbles away in panic, clasping a hand over his mouth. He cannot face them now, he cannot _talk,_ he cannot bear their judgement and disappointment and _existence._ Whatever Felix has told them in his letters - he is wrong, they should not be here, they should not have heeded the call.

Dimitri realizes that he is straggling towards the dormitories and changes his course so sharply he is nearly brought to his knees. Sylvain will want his room, and he cannot look at Sylvain either.

It is fine. He will find somewhere else to camp out.

*

Dimitri ends up hiding in the damp coolness of the dungeons beneath the monastery - for the whole day, and the night, and well into the next afternoon. 

"How does that one go again?" Glenn takes slow, measured steps across the empty cell with his hands clasped behind his back, and a scrap of memory is waved in Dimitri's face until he focuses on it - the last time the two of them were in a cell. "Ah yes! _‘When scared, a rat runs downwards, a dog runs forwards, and a cat runs upwards.’_ What does that make you, Dimitri?"

Dimitri wills himself to sink deeper into the shadows, run through and morose. 

"I am not scared," he mumbles.

Glenn whirls around to look at him. The gleam of Areadbhar and the pale light seeping through a finger's width of an opening near the ceiling halo him in dust. "Oh yeah? What do you call it then? Look at you, so terrified of everything and everyone you can't even move. When are you going to Enbarr again? When are you stopping all of this? You know, all the deaths? That little thing?"

"Soon," Dimitri promises. Leans his blazing head back against the wall to drink in some of its coolness, but the hard pressure only makes it worse.

Soon. Tomorrow? No later than that. He needs to leave.

"Hmph," Glenn wanders out of the cell, wanders back in. "Out of one cage and into another… Wonder who's got to die this time to kick you into action again."

Dimitri buries his face in his hands, his harsh breathing mercifully louder than Glenn's disgusted voice. When he later lifts his pulsing head again, Glenn is no longer there.

He stays in the thick darkness, huddled deep into his cloak, dozing. The headache slowly, so slowly thins out to an ever-persistent trickle. As the next day crawls towards early evening, his mind becomes fever-sharp from hunger, but his stomach still roils with anxiety, and Hilda finds him as he is considering his further options.

“Ah, _there_ you are,” she clicks her tongue, glancing around the cell. “Very…atmospheric. Fitting.” Hilda wrinkles her nose. “ _Smells,_ though. If it’s from you, don’t come close to me.”

Dimitri has no _intention_ not to. “What do you want.”

Hilda lets out a long-suffering sigh, combs her hair forwards just so she can flip it back over her shoulder. 

“Me? I just want a day where nobody wants things from _me,_ but such is the burden of Mister Leader Man’s right-hand lady.”

Hilda is _a lot_ , and Dimitri understands suddenly why she and Claude work so well together. The two of them can probably out-talk anyone.

“She’s pretty,” Uncle muses. “Her hair is a very similar colour, too.”

Dimitri suppresses a shudder; his limbs begin warming up. “What does Claude want, then?” he asks. The sooner he can steer Hilda to the point, the sooner this can be over. His hands suddenly itch for action.

“World domination? A nap? No clue,” Hilda gives him a bored half-shrug. “Right now though, he wants you in the war room. Why he had to send _me_ to fetch you though is anyone’s guess…”

Hilda chatters on, but Dimitri blocks her out. How did Claude know where he was? Did anyone see him? Does Claude have eyes everywhere in the monastery?

Dimitri _does_ have a solid clue regarding Claude’s choice of a messenger. He is ready to do just about anything to be left in peace.

Father fixes Hilda with a long look; from this angle, Dimitri sees the exposed muscles of his cheek move when he tenses his jaw. 

"Remember your purpose," Father says without looking at him. "Do not get distracted."

They are halfway up the main building when someone glides down the stairs towards them, and before Dimitri's mind even recognizes the person he grabs them by the front of their velvet camisole and slams them into the wall.

Recognition comes in the next moment, and Dimitri tightens his fist and pushes it up, lifting Ferdinand von Aegir off the ground.

"What are _you_ doing here," he growls, aiming the edge of Areadbhar at his neck. 

"Hey now, relax, yeah? He's with us," Hilda sounds extremely unimpressed, while von Aegir scrabbles at Dimitri's immovable hand, long ginger hair tangling around his shoulders.

"An _imperial?"_ Dimitri scoffs - Father echoes the sound, a bloodthirsty shine to his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, _blah,_ now let him go."

Something in Hilda's bored, casual tone knocks Dimitri off-balance just enough for him to step back and drop his hands. Von Aegir lands on the stairs with as much grace as humanly possible in such a situation and only stumbles a little, coughing into his fist.

"A pleasure to see you too, Dimitri," he says with a terse smile as he fixes his clothes.

Dimitri does not understand. He does not understand anything. 

"What are you - are you with the Alliance now?" he asks.

Von Aegir stares back at him with just as much incredulity, only highlighted in a somewhat hysterical way by his smile. He always wore that one, Dimitri suddenly remembers. "Yes - our Dukedom was forfeited to the Empire. I had to flee to save my life. My father…" the smile wavers, slips. Von Aegir shakes his head. "I am surprised you have not heard of it! It was quite the news at the start of the war."

Dimitri grits his teeth. "I was busy."

"Ah," von Aegir halts, exchanges a look with Hilda. "Right. Well. By the way, congratulations on - not being dead, and all. Ahem. The Faerghan nobility would be all the poorer for your loss."

Dimitri glowers. Von Aegir visibly tries not to swallow.

_"Right,"_ Hilda looks between them. "Anyway, you know what, Dimitri? I suddenly remembered I'm on rubble clearing duty, I'm sure you can find your way from here, and - Ferdinand? Will you be a dear and help a lady out?"

Before either of them have the time to react, Hilda grabs von Aegir by the elbow and drags him down the stairs, waving Dimitri on in the opposite direction. With nothing better to do, Dimitri complies and soon finds himself before the heavy doors. He does not remember being in the war room before, but cannot piece his memory together enough to know if he is supposed to.

Claude is already inside, and so is Professor Byleth, and the vacancy of their stare is the same, but the colour of their eyes and hair is different. An old puzzle piece hovers uncertainly, looking for its place. Dimitri runs a hand through his own hair, through the ghostly outline of the crown. Something that will not come to pass.

...Byleth is staring at him, mud bubbling around their feet, hair plastered to their grimy face. The deep canyon behind them, crossed with a vein of the great bridge, keens and beckons. The rain is coming down hard, and Dimitri has lost everything, is nothing more than a ghost himself now.

Who are they? What power do they wield that shapes and molds entire nations?

"Why do you have an imperial in Garreg Mach?" Dimitri rumbles, his brow furrowed.

Claude looks entirely unperturbed. "Which one?"

_"'Which one'?!"_

"Well, we have Ferdinand graciously lending his expertise on the battlefield and in Heavy Armour training…" Claude's smile is glass. "Dorothea is normally around, but currently out and busy getting invaluable intel - from _your_ occupied territories, by the way… And then, of course, Bernadetta is most likely in her room, which makes me guess it's not her you've run into. Ferdinand, then?"

Dimitri stares at him, incredulous. "Is this a _joke_ to you?"

"It's anything but," Claude's gaze hardens in a second warning. "I am not in the business of killing people left and right. Allies are already hard to come by."

Ah, so that answers one question, at least. "Is that why you kept me alive as well? Is that why I am here and not dead in a ditch or chained up in the dungeons? Or sent to Edelgard in a cage?"

The change in Claude's face makes Dimitri bristle.

"It hurts me that you'd think I'd want to miss out on your charming personality," Claude answers brusquely, which is no answer at all. "Well then. Shall we talk?"

And so the three of them talk. To be precise, Claude talks and gesticulates, his arm out of the sling, over a massive map of Fódlan with figurines scattered in clusters across the leather surface, and Byleth nods, and Dimitri tries not to grip the heavy table hard enough to splinter the wood.

“I’ll get to the point, Your Princeliness,” Claude says, as if he has not been dancing around it for at least half an hour by now. “The calculations are very simple. The Alliance doesn’t have enough manpower to fight the Empire on its own. Neither does the Kingdom - that one is in outright dire straits, not sure how much you know.”

Dimitri lowers his head, furrows his brow until he feels the tug of the eyepatch string across his forehead. Thinks of - that _woman -_ her familiar, foreign face contorted in a sneer that cuts deep, unnatural lines into her skin. His blind eye stings, a garrotte flares around his neck. Dimitri takes shallow, measured breaths as it constricts.

“I know enough,” he chokes out.

Claude clasps his hands together, his pleasant expression eclipsed for a moment by alarm. “Of course - I’m sorry.” He looks down for a moment but perks back up almost immediately. “Then you know that our only chance of success is a united front. There are lords in the east of Faerghus, still fighting the Imperials. If we just retake Fhirdiad…”

Dimitri knows where this is going. “No.”

“Um - _yes,_ though?” Claude looks so genuinely taken aback, so discomfited at Dimitri's disagreement, and it grates, grates, grates on his frayed nerves.

“It is not simple,” Dimitri says. “It is not ‘just retake Fhirdiad’, they…” he swallows; the garrotte tightens, cutting into his flesh. His body below the neck is going numb. There is no time. “People will die.”

Because in the end, what good does saving a kingdom do if it is inhabited only by ghosts? What point would be in it? So the faster he goes south, the faster he stops this...

“They _are_ already dying,” Byleth speaks up; they have been sitting silently this entire time, but now fly in to support their student. “They are waiting for their prince.”

Dimitri is drowning in the bottomless sunlight and the sounds of a crowd and the deepest, most crushing desperation. The next moment, he resurfaces, and everything is quiet again.

They do not understand. Neither of them does.

Retaking Fhirdiad will set him back weeks. Months, even. People will die. Nothing matters more than stopping Edelgard.

Claude keeps talking, keeps bringing up arguments, weaving his complicated net around Dimitri, but the garrotte cuts it cleanly through, uncaring. Claude’s words wash over Dimitri, nonsensical, superficial, muffled. His head is hurting more insistently again.

Dimitri has no time to waste. Even this pointless discussion puts him at a disadvantage as he spends precious minutes rooted to the spot when he could be preparing for the journey.

Lying still does not come naturally to him, despite all the other ways he has been ruined in. He wishes he did not have to do this...

But people will die. And even more of them will if he does not leave - and forget tomorrow. It has to happen tonight.

Oh Goddess.

“If I agree,” Dimitri speaks up, interrupting the flow of Claude’s words. “Can we adjourn this meeting.”

“Oh - hm,” the initial surprise in Claude’s expression gives way to something more layered, which is then smoothed out into a pleasant smile. “Well, had I known I could just talk you to death, I would’ve picked up the pace.” He shoots Byleth a fox-quick grin and turns back to Dimitri, clapping his hands once. “Very well! We’ll need to get everyone in here to talk strategy, but for now, yeah, the meeting can be ‘ _adjourned’.”_

Dimitri releases the table. A howl is lodged in his throat, wordless and miserable, and he leaves the room before it can shred its way out.

*

Dimitri drifts through the monastery like a spectre, hazy, almost blind with grief, drowning in the poisonous sense of urgency, in the countdown measured by the snapping threads of other people’s lives. The ghosts bear down on him, blanketing the world with uncertain fog, and he forgets to watch where he goes and ends up running into Sylvain.

Sylvain talks and laughs and claps him on the shoulder, undeterred by the startled growl, and the cordiality of his smile does not reach his eyes, but something much more vulnerable in them does not reach his words either. 

Last time they saw each other - before parting ways by the bridge over the Fralla River - Sylvain urged Dimitri to be cautious, his own haunted posture an unspoken example. Now, he talks as if he was never so tense that he was infecting his horse with anxiety as it danced under him. He speaks as if it had never happened at all and, momentarily entranced, Dimitri finds himself being led into the dining hall.

He walks as if in a dream, dazed and with his mouth full of cotton, overwhelmed by all the voices, steps where directed, sits when people shift to free him a spot on the bench - on _their_ bench. This is where he used to sit, he remembers now. Lifts his eye, looks around the table - to his left is Sylvain, across are Ingrid, Annette, and Mercedes, and Ashe is hiding in the cut-off half of the world to his right. Felix is absent - Sylvain explains without being prompted that Claude wanted to talk to him, and when Dimitri sweeps his gaze across the noisy hall, he cannot spot Hilda either.

Dedue is also not at the table, but of course - he is dead, after all. He is - but no. He...?

Dimitri is so helplessly confused, so hopelessly unmoored. People are talking around him as if there is no war, no invasion, no death, as if these five years did not happen at all - how can they pretend so seamlessly? Are they not afraid of him? How can they sit next to him and act like he is still their prince? Like nothing has changed?

Or did these years truly not happen?

Did he - get stuck in a vision?

What is real?

Dimitri feels himself sweating, runs a hand through his hair and lets out a short hiss when it snags on the gauntlets, pulling him through the thick wall of fog.

The conversation halts, attempts to continue, halts again. In the void, he hears Ashe shift uneasily away.

“Are you alright, Your Highness?” Ingrid’s voice.

Real or not?

“Where is…” he rasps, coughs to clear his throat. “Where is Dedue?”

A chill grips Dimitri. He cannot lift his eye. There is a plate in front of him but he cannot even comprehend the contents. Everything is swimming, the hum and buzz of the hall grow louder, shriller, cut into his ears.

“Dedue is resting, I insisted that he takes it easy tonight,” Mercedes replies, and Dimitri can barely discern her quiet voice even though she is sitting right across from him. “Long journeys are still difficult for him, I’m afraid. But he’s making great progress!” she adds hurriedly. “I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you tomorrow!”

Dimitri’s breaths are coming harsh and fast, but nobody seems to notice. How do they not see it? His skin cannot hold anything in anymore, he can _feel_ viscera leaking between the plating of his armour. How can they be so carefree when the earth is already splitting beneath their feet?

Ashe coughs next to him, gurgles around the javelin. Across, Annette smells like smoke, and Dimitri lifts his eye in increments until he spots the first broken bone poking through her bruised, dirt-stained skin.

“Come on everyone, eat before it grows cold!” Ingrid suggests, and they do just that, and Dimitri is left to sift through his visions over and over and over, until it all blurs together into a sludge, settles on top of his mind like a blanket of dirty spring snow. 

He feels cold, and numb, and desolate. He is superficially aware of people coming and going: Rodrigue’s corpse walks over to give him a fond, proud smile, and various lords and officers swarm him to express their joy at - something - at the honour of killing for him? dying for him? until Sylvain grows irritated and glowers them into leaving their table alone. But by then the conversation has already shifted to the topic of Fhirdiad.

“We’ve got it all planned out already,” Ingrid announces. “I will fly ahead with my guard and pick up the rest of my troops along the way, and then Lord Nicholas and the Margrave can double down on the eastern front while we advance from the south - right?”

“It’s what I heard from Felix, yeah,” Sylvain confirms. “And my father seems to be holding down the fort pretty well, so that should be a big help.”

“There’s going to be so much work afterwards,” Mercedes shakes her head solemnly. “I heard that people are still resisting in the city itself… So many wounded.”

“That is true - We will have to establish proper supply lines too, redirect the flow so people don’t have to starve anymore,” Ashe continues her thought. “But we’ll help them! It’s going to be so good to have the capital back. Once that’s done, I’m sure western Faerghus will be easy.”

“Yeah! We got this!” Annette exclaims with a fist pump, but instantly catches herself. “It’s - really horrible, the things that are happening in Faerghus,” she wrings her hands, smoothes her dress. “It’s heartbreaking. But I’m really glad we are coming to help.”

Have they talked about this before? They must have. It would not sound so stiff otherwise.

Dimitri keeps his teeth ground tightly together, his eye on his plate. He cannot look at them, because then they will look to him for confirmation, and he will have to lie, and he cannot lie.

“Dimitri?” someone asks, but the trill in his ears paints every voice the same timbre.

They all sit around Dimitri, waiting for him to speak, waiting for him to lead them to their violent ends.

A thorn unfurls in Dimitri’s throat, its point sinking into the soft tissue. All this suffering, all these deaths - because of his shortcomings.

But he will fix it. He will.

“Yes,” Dimitri says around the rigid shape in his throat. “Fhirdiad needs to be retaken.”

Dimitri is running out of time. Always, inevitably, running out of time.

*

After dinner, Rodrigue beckons Dimitri to follow him and brings him to one of the staff rooms. Somebody used to live there, briefly - Byleth’s father? Dimitri is not sure.

There, he is faced with his own father’s ghost.

“Gorgeous, isn’t it?” Rodrigue says quietly - reverently. His words are dripping blood, washed away by the rain. “We’ll have to adjust it when we have your measurements, of course, but I’m sure that won’t take long - you really do take after Lambert…”

The suit of armour is… Dimitri curls his hands into fists, closes his eye for a moment of respite, anything to weather the sight before him.

The plating is of white and black steel set in the winter pattern of a direwolf pelt, with the Blaiddyd crest emblazoned on the chestplate. The gauntlets and the spaulders with accents of deep blue and turquoise flare out like gryphon wings, massive, imposing. A cloak of blue and cold grey cascades from the shoulders, the fur trimming of it touching the floor, and Dimitri sees the fluffy white collar and recalls suddenly - knows that if he is to look at the back of the suit, he will see that the fur is white throughout. The pure white gryphon pelt that Father wore, that every Blaiddyd king wore.

Father’s cloak…Father’s armour.

His to wear now, as the would-be liberator of Fhirdiad, as the rightful heir to the throne of Faerghus.

Dimitri feels sick. Plants his feet firmer on the floor so he does not sway from the hit. Father stands off to the side, shaking his head slowly, his mouth a twisted line of derision. He knows Dimitri’s lie, knows that he is unworthy. Traitor, coward, disgusting wretch.

He is not happy with Dimitri. No matter what he does, he cannot please him.

Dimitri realizes Rodrigue has been talking this entire time, kicks his feet in the water until he breaks the surface.

“...and I’m certain that once we get there, coordinating with my brother’s troops will not be a problem. After all, the correspondence channels have proven to be...” Rodrigue pauses, gives him a knowing smile. “But I am boring you. We can talk it all over when we hold a council with everyone.”

Dimitri’s tongue is stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he is afraid of making a sound and giving himself away.

Rodrigue is so…familiar, and paternal in a way that Dimitri has already forgotten how to long for. It almost makes him lose himself, think that everything is going to be alright.

Rodrigue reaches up to place a hand on his shoulder, in a gesture that by all accounts should feel comforting if it were not done in the jerky touch of a cadaver.

"I am...so, so glad that the news was wrong," he says softly and tries to squeeze: Dimitri feels the whisper of the motion against his armour. "None of my men saw you escape, and so many bodies were not recovered from the flood, and then Cornelia - well. It must have been a lookalike. Goddess keep his soul."

Dimitri tries not to screw his eye shut again. The sack to cover the face - the cloth to hide the body… With everyone who could stand a chance at recognizing Dimitri by sight hunted too far away from the capital, nobody in the crowd would be able to tell the difference.

Another soul, torn apart because he has to live.

Rodrigue shifts - and so does his expression, into something much too open and tender, something that must never be exposed to a creature such as Dimitri.

“Your father would be so proud of you, Dimitri,” just like his son - either of them - Rodrigue deals killing blows so casually, with such easy grace. “I know I am.”

Rodrigue gives him another fond, watery smile and leaves the room, a bloody trail marking his footsteps. Dimitri puts his head into his hands, breathes harshly through the pain in his chest, his throat, his mouth. Hears Father take a step closer, a heavy thud of a boot against the floor.

“I have to go,” Dimitri mutters, shakes his head. “I must go south. I _must_ . _”_

“You think I don’t know your thoughts?” Father hisses. “You think I do not hear you wavering?”

“I will not waver,” Dimitri promises. “I know what I must do.”

Fhirdiad will burn. But maybe, if he is fast enough, Faerghus will be saved.

They can rebuild Fhirdiad. It has been done before.

“Oh, who cares. You’re only going to fail anyway. _Again.”_ Father scoffs, leans back to give him a pointed onceover. “Let it burn,” he scowls, “let it all burn. You are not fit to be King anyway.”

He is not. He is not. He is not. He has only one purpose, and he will live for that purpose only, and only until it is fulfilled. 

*

“Heard we’re marching for Fhirdiad.”

Dimitri has staggered outside and fled to the cathedral’s eastern watchtower, to hide his shame under the thick cover of the fallen night. The cool, stiff darkness crawls into his mouth, tickles his throat, makes home behind his eyelids, and he cannot face anyone, cannot look at anyone, cannot handle even one more voice in the chorus hammering down on him in their discontent. He faces east and lets the monastery be devoured by the void to his right.

But of course, Felix tracks him down anyway. Their own curse for two: Felix always there to witness Dimitri at his worst, witness his trembling, quivering point of breaking and the dull, messy husk that stays behind; Dimitri, always there to _break_.

Felix’s tone has the subtlety and smoothness of a patch of moonlight glinting off a predator’s sleek fur.

Dimitri cannot lie to him. But he cannot speak the truth, either.

“So it would seem,” he says carefully.

Felix squints, and Dimitri is already preparing himself for a fight, for jabs and prods and cuts until Felix bleeds the truth out of him, but he only hums and turns and climbs down the crumbling tower without another word, leaving Dimitri to catch himself against a blow that does not come.

Something withers in Dimitri, and withers further when he realizes that, if all goes well, this will be the last time he sees Felix.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _“Speak_ already, boar,” Felix snaps, but then - an abrupt sound - a twig breaking - and his eyes tick away from Dimitri’s, looking behind him and to the side...
> 
> Dimitri whips around, his lance raised. There is a figure hiding among the trees, dressed in black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for this chapter: injury, check end notes for details :)

_do you remember how you dragged me through the woods?_

_how you stumbled among steaming puddles and shards?_

Dimitri exits the monastery soon after the big bell chimes midnight. Spring nights are growing shorter, so his window to leave unnoticed is small. But if he does not delay, there will be enough distance between him and Garreg Mach by the time anyone notices he is gone. After that, nobody will be there to get hurt. Dimitri will be free to do what needs to be done.

He skirts the edge of the villages outside the monastery and slips out of the valley through the eastern pass, picking his way through the dense forest along the river, avoiding the roads. He holds Areadbhar tightly, maneuvering the lance among the low hanging branches. By now Dimitri is healthy enough to set a brisk pace, which should allow him to reach Myrrdin in a bit over a week, less if he steals a horse along the way. Could probably try it here too, but if something goes wrong and causes a commotion… Though usually he manages to pass the area unnoticed and unaccosted - unless...

Lost in his thoughts as he contemplates the resulting visions, Dimitri does not notice that he has company until the shadows between two trees morph into a figure. His body reacts faster than his mind, and he is already gripping Areadbhar in both hands, startled and poised to strike, when he recognizes Felix.

“Where do you think you are going?” Felix asks with his hands crossed. He does not even reach for his swords.

_‘Why are you following me?’ - ‘What are you doing here?’ - ‘How did you know?’_ \- “Did you track me?”

“Please,” Felix scoffs. “As if that’s hard. Your stupid lance glows.”

Dimitri blinks, turns his head to look at Areadbhar. Right. He has kept it resting in his right hand or strapped to his back and - yeah.

“Plus, I figured you’d be an idiot and go try to take her on by yourself. _Again.”_ Under the trees, the moonlight slashed by shadows of clouds, it is hard for Dimitri to see, but he can still make out how Felix wrinkles his nose. “Instead of keeping your word. That eager to die?”

Dimitri shakes his head. “I need to do it.” He does not want to fight with him, he is so tired of it. So tired of everything. “Get out of my way, Felix,” he says.

Felix should stay here, in Garreg Mach, live whatever life he has built for himself under Byleth and Claude. He seems to be doing fine - he does not need any of this.

“Why are you so bloody dense?” Felix uncrosses his arms, takes a step towards Dimitri; river mud squelches under his boots. Something else struggles to leave his mouth, but he just shakes his head and growls in frustration.

How could Dimitri ever begin to explain? How could he explain that every time he closes his eyes, he is assaulted with visions of a terrible, terrifying future that grows nearer and nearer every day, that will arrive regardless of whether he wants it to or not, and his only hope is to meet it head on? How could he explain that people will keep dying - innocent, good people, undeserving of this cruel fate - until he puts an end to it with his own hands? That every moment he spends - sleeping, or eating, or hesitating, is a moment longer that they all have to suffer? That all who are already dead remain so for nothing?

How could he explain? How would Felix ever understand?

All he has is this impotent frustration. Even if he could tell Felix - who is to say he would listen?

_“Speak_ already, boar,” Felix snaps, but then - an abrupt sound - a twig breaking - and his eyes tick away from Dimitri’s, looking behind him and to the side...

Dimitri whips around, his lance raised. There is a figure hiding among the trees, dressed in black. A spy?

The following happens in quick succession:

The intruder draws an arcanum and summons a bolt of lightning. 

Felix lunges past Dimitri, calling on a lightning of his own. 

The humid air throbs and quivers as it is pierced by two arcing pulses.

The world explodes. The night is bathed in blinding light, painting red across Dimitri’s tightly shut eyelid.

Both lightnings hit.

Somebody screams.

It all lasts a second - or an eternity - and the world resumes, and Dimitri is thrown back into it, cruelly, to the sight of Felix’s rigid body toppling into the mud.

“Felix!” 

Dimitri drops Areadbhar, kneels next to him. A small bolt zaps his hand when he touches Felix’s back, shivers along his armour. Dimitri rolls him over, tries to wipe the mud from his face. Felix does not wake up, does not move, does not make a sound. He is unconscious - or, or…

Dimitri curses his useless hands, comes up with a solution in the next moment. He bends down and shoves his face under Felix’s chin, poking his nose where the pulse should be. A second passes, another, as he tries to calm his frantic breathing and _listen._ His face grows hot and damp.

Nothing. Nothing. 

A strangled howl wrenches itself from Dimitri’s throat. He cannot _think._

“Come on…” Something half-forgotten tugs at the frayed hem of his memory. How does one restart a heart? He sits up and places his hands on Felix’s chest and presses down, and again, and again. “Please!”

Something cracks under his hands, but Dimitri cannot afford to freeze in fear. Must press on, even if it hurts Felix. Even if every vibration of bones grinding together almost brings him to the point of vomiting.

A quiet, choked-off gasp, and Dimitri jerks his hands away from Felix’s chest so quickly they clang against his breastplate. He lowers his face to Felix’s throat once more.

A faint pulse taps against his skin. Dimitri lets out a quaking breath, feels Felix’s throat move in a small spasm. He is alive. He is alive.

But he needs help. Goddess, he is so pale, blending with the moonlight. They have to get back to the monastery.

After a wavering moment, Dimitri collects Felix into his arms and lurches upright. It took him an hour to get here. He can make it back in half that time. He _will._

At the gate, Dimitri barks at a guard to wake a healer and staggers, panting, up to one of the small rooms adjacent to the Reception Hall. Mercedes meets them there, a shawl thrown over her nightgown and sleep rubbed hastily from her eyes. She directs Dimitri to place Felix down on the bedspread and undress him while she heats up the water.

Mercedes asks about what has hit Felix, how long ago, if he was conscious since, if Dimitri himself is wounded. She does not address why they were out in the middle of the night.

Dimitri’s hands shake so much that he cannot even get through the clasps on Felix’s overcoat, and Mercedes ends up gently inserting herself between them and doing it for him. After Felix is relieved of his mud-splattered outerwear - he put on his _full attire,_ damn it all, what was he planning? - Dimitri picks him up again for a moment and lowers him back down after Mercedes tugs the soiled bedspread off the cot.

Felix looks so - pale, and small, and still, and how could Dimitri ever think that his heart was frozen? That the hurt and the fatigue were all that was left in it? It sits in his chest like a burning, scorching coal, pounds against his ribs as if wanting to force its way out. 

How could he let this happen? Why would Felix do that?

Mercedes unties the front of Felix’s shirt, pushes the hem of his turtleneck up and out of the way. Thin red lines snake from under it, curling and branching like painted-on trees, like trails of parasitic worms, like, like - Dimitri’s visions.

He watches, transfixed and repulsed in equal measures, at the curse mocking him, staking its claim on Felix, marking his skin.

Bruises are already purpling in the middle of Felix’s chest, at the tangled roots of the mark where the lightning has hit. Dimitri clenches his fingers, forces himself to breathe.

“Dimitri,” Mercedes crosses the room to check on the water, pours something into it from a vial. “I’ve got this. Maybe you should step outside?”

Her words might sound like a question but Dimitri follows the underlying order in them. He does not make it far and ends up sinking heavily to the floor outside the room, head in his hands. He should have been more observant. He should have listened better. He should have been faster...

Abruptly, Dimitri realizes that he left Areadbhar in the forest. _Curse_ the damned thing. If Felix did not track him down by its glow…

Dimitri squeezes his head, picking at the visions like a ugly, oozing scab. Leaving Areadbhar at the monastery, stealing a horse, noticing the intruder… 

Felix is there. Felix is there at all times.

If Dimitri pushed him back, if he took the hit…

But no… He must survive for now, must he not? That is what it all comes down to, again and again and again.

Dimitri is pulled from his private torment when Mercedes steps out into the hallway, closing the door quietly behind her.

“Oh! You’re here,” she says with mild surprise. “Felix is resting. You should be too, the morning is still a while away.” 

Another directive disguised as a suggestion. But Dimitri cannot bring himself to get up: it feels as if his limbs have given up on working, the hard sprint catching up to him. How can he go and sleep when Felix is in there?

Mercedes tilts her head at his unmoving form, stifles a yawn with her hand. “Well, _I_ am going back to bed,” she says. “Would you escort me?”

A pinprick of shame pierces Dimitri’s miserable husk, jostles him to awareness. It is because of him that Mercedes is awake in the first place.

“Of course,” he replies and wills himself to stand. His joints creak in a belated protest at the uncomfortable position, at the long trek.

Dimitri walks Mercedes to the dormitories. He does not offer her an arm, but she places a hand in the crook of his elbow and leans towards him anyway, sleepy and soft, to hide from the morning chill. Trusting. 

“Rest well, Dimitri,” she says, pausing once they are inside.

Instead of walking towards her room, she stops at the stairs to the upper level, effectively cutting off Dimitri’s way back outside. The message is clear.

He _could_ still go back to the infirmary. But what good would it do? 

It is best that he stays away from Felix anyway.

Dimitri nods, and turns around, and makes his way to his room. Well - to Sylvain’s room; the door to his old one is closed, and a sound of snoring reaches him through the thick wood. In Sylvain’s room, he lies in bed, head craned back to look at the low overcast sky, until the uneasiness maims him to sleep.

*

“So...this is interesting.”

Claude is standing at the head of the war table, looking pointedly at the black mask that lies on top of scattered papers.

A small party was sent to investigate the exit from the valley, and they came back with Areadbhar and the body of the intruder. The woman must have survived the hit of Felix’s Thoron but attempted to wield the lance and was punished by it for her arrogance.

The inner surface of the mask is covered in inscriptions in a language that Dimitri does not recognize, but Lysithea grows as white as her hair and turns away, worrying her lip until Marianne pushes their chairs together and offers her a shoulder.

Dimitri notes how Claude glances at Lysithea, obviously filing away her reaction, but looks away when Claude catches him staring.

The air in the war room is...charged. By now, everyone knows that Felix has landed in the infirmary after suffering a Thoron hit, and that Dimitri was the one who brought him in from outside the monastery, and even though he has not offered any explanation to Mercedes as to why they were there in the first place, people had no trouble drawing conclusions. 

Dimitri is sitting on Claude’s right, one seat down from Byleth, and most of the room is swallowed from existence together with the people in it, but even if he does not turn his head, he can still see Hilda and Rodrigue and Sylvain across the table. Hilda does not seem to find him important enough to care, but Rodrigue looks deeply troubled and quietly disappointed, and Sylvain outright refuses to meet his eye, his humour turning cutting and morbid every time he is prompted to speak, and Dimitri does not know which is worse.

He does not dare to turn his head too far: after the meeting has already begun, the door to Dimitri’s left opened, and the ghost of Dedue stepped in so softly that Dimitri’s blood grew cold and stinging. He felt the air move as Dedue passed behind him, a strange cadence to the ghost’s footfalls, heard the soft scrape of wood against stone when he settled into a chair somewhere in the void. Now, Dimitri cannot look, unsure of what exactly he is afraid of finding out if he does.

“This changes our plans somewhat, as you might’ve guessed,” Claude continues once Lysithea pulls herself together and looks resolutely towards the mask again. “Since Dimitri’s arrival, the original plan was for _all_ of us to go to Fhirdiad, leaving a nominal number of soldiers to hold Garreg Mach, but now…” He uses a thin wooden rake to wave at the small figurines placed across the map of Fódlan, leans on the table to reach out and push a big golden one east. “I’ll leave you near Daphnel and go to Derdriu. I have questions I need answered, and Derdriu will offer me enough strings to tug at and see what comes up.”

Derdriu…

Strings that are tied to something too heavy, lying too deep. Sun is beating down on the docks, but that is not why the ships are burning.

Dimitri suppresses the urge to sit up straighter, gripped by alarm.

“Derdriu?” A disbelieving scoff in Gloucester’s voice. “We have a war to fight, and you intend to go play your little _spy games?”_

“How long do you think it will take?” A voice Dimitri does not remember, cannot bring himself to turn his head and find out.

“Those ‘little spy games’ are what got us this far, Lorenz,” Claude replies; his smile turns so sharp it feels like a weapon. “And Ignatz - I should be able to rejoin you on your way back south. Any other questions?”

“A leader should not abandon his troops before a major battle,” Gloucester sounds both judgemental and oddly - pleased? Dimitri hears a whisper of a thin porcelain cup clinking against the saucer as it is picked up. “But, of course, I will be happy to step up and provide due guidance and…”

“And I’m _sure_ you’d do an amazing job,” Claude interrupts him. “But we already have a leader with a _personal_ stake in this battle.”

Abruptly, Dimitri realizes that Claude means him. He moves his head, and every face that appears from the darkness is turned towards him. He glances hurriedly away from their doubt and distrust, swallows thickly as he focuses on Claude.

A much louder sound of porcelain colliding with porcelain scrapes against Dimitri’s headache. 

“You are giving our army to _him?!”_ Gloucester attempts to recover from his sputtering. “I mean no offence, but you seem to be placing _a great deal_ of faith in someone who chose to _run away_ from said battle like a thief in the night the very _moment_ there was talk of taking responsibility!”

“Careful, Lorenz, or I might take that offence whether you mean it or not,” Claude may be addressing him, but his eyes are on Dimitri, his raised eyebrow a dare. “What do you say, Your Princeliness? Am I wrong to count on you?”

Suddenly, all Dimitri can hear is his own breathing, muffled and faraway. The room fades into the shadows. He looks down at the map, at the futures charting their paths across it like a spill of dye in swirling water, morphing and writhing and slithering. Traces the dotted lines that lead north, with red figurines marking Imperial regiments, a bigger and more elaborate one placed in the middle of the capital among the grey checkers that signify civilian resistance. 

His Kingdom. His people. Fighting, even now, against all odds - and by the Goddess, does he know those odds - and waiting for his return. Waiting for him to take responsibility over something that is greater and infinitely more complicated than the curve of his lance against Edelgard’s throat.

Dimitri thinks of Felix next, the slack sway of his limbs as Dimitri sprinted through the woods back to the monastery, the small, pained noises he made from under the thin film of fitful unconsciousness and pain.

His person, too. Waiting for Dimitri, always, demanding that he accepts who he is, for better or worse.

“You are not wrong,” Dimitri replies and watches Claude’s mouth twitch in a smile. 

A murmur flickers through the room like water over river stones, excited, apprehensive, doubtful. Dimitri looks around carefully, his gaze slipping from one face to another. The Deer, with various levels of obviousness of their tentative appraisal - except for the assaulted, deeply offended expression that Lorenz is wearing. The Lions - _his_ Lions - perking up and placing a careful hand on the door that many of them have already shut. 

Annette straightens up in her seat, eyes wide and alert, while next to her Mercedes smiles and ducks her head. Ashe mutters something to himself with a quiet smack of a fist against his palm; Ingrid places her hands on the table, as if she is ready to get up and head out straight away. Sylvain looks sceptical, and Dimitri holds his gaze, unblinking, until he squints in contemplation and breaks eye contact.

Dimitri still does not chance a glance at Dedue. Cannot risk it here, not in front of all the people, not until they can finally talk and he can try to lay this ghost to rest.

Father stands behind Rodrigue, Glenn - behind Sylvain, neither bothering to hide their scorn. Dimitri swallows the pang of guilt.

He just needs a little more time. Just a little more.

Then, she will pay.

“It will be my honour to lead you,” Dimitri tells everyone. “I know I have no right to your trust, but I promise to earn it.”

The words feel only moderately fake in his mouth.

Across the table, Rodrigue is still frowning, but he gives Dimitri a firm nod in response.

Claude’s grin is a high note, sharp and exhilarated. “Well then, let’s talk strategy.”

*

There is a lot to moving an army across half the continent, Dimitri knows, even when it is mostly through friendly territories. 

Different paces need to be considered in order not to overestimate how quickly a column can move compared to a single man. Further estimates need to be made on how much sustenance can be hunted or foraged along the way, how much food and what kind must be brought along, how much can be bought in the villages and with what coin. Compare those numbers to the maps that denote the slaughtered settlements, the forests scorched free of game and firewood. 

Account for dysentery and scurvy, lay down the rules of dealing with the dead - a road passed by an army, however well organized, is soiled and strewn with corpses afterwards, and while it cannot be avoided, the damage certainly can - and must - be minimized. Figure out the feed for the mounts and beasts of burden, the water for traversing the poisonous territories. Clothes, blankets, mending supplies, flints, equipment to rig up portable smithies and tanneries. 

Once they enter the occupied territories, they need to be certain whether they smuggle the army towards the capital or blaze their way through. How much time they would lose on the former - how many soldiers on the latter.

Dimitri starts out slow but grows bolder as his long-forgotten training kicks in. His mind expands after being focused for so long on controlling only one malnourished body - now, he touches the memories of how to wrangle the massive bulk of an army. Passages on strategy and tactics jump out at him from faded pages only to dissolve in the next moment, echoes of his tutors' voices knock around in his head. His own voice grows stronger. People listen to him.

Dimitri, in turn, listens to Byleth when they speak up to point out an outdated tactic, making suggestions that he _knows_ come from hands-on experience rather than his painstaking studies. Their voice wakes up a pang in his chest. Is that what it would have felt like - being led by them at the academy? Would _he_ be sitting at the head of the table instead of Claude? Where would Claude be?

Seteth, tense and terse to Dimitri's right, promises funding and open support of the Church, demanding in return that they find Lady Rhea - apparently she has disappeared after the battle of Garreg Mach five years ago, and he suspects that she has been taken captive.

Dimitri frowns as he listens to him talk, a memory of something enormous blocking out the sun and then flying - flying - north?

He sees her, suddenly, at the battlements of Fhirdiad's old castle. Not the palace - which means it is wartime.

The wind is tearing at their cloaks as a crimson army advances. He watches its approach. His sight is whole - and still the army bleeds across the entirety of it, horizon to horizon. The presence next to him is as sharp as a knife sawing through a safety rope, and his grip on the mountainside is slipping.

Dimitri shudders the vision off, clenches his fists under the table. A cold shiver grasps his spine, a bitter sense of determination and slowly simmering wrath, the first signs of boiling, the maddening rush of a cornered animal's anticipation.

Whatever that was - Dimitri does not wish to know it.

Eventually, after what feels like hours, they exchange looks and in a moment of tired bewilderment realize that they have gotten through all the questions on their immediate agenda.

"Very well, then," Claude looks down at the protocol notes that Ignatz has passed to him from the other end of the table, leafs through them quickly. "We will march on the twentieth of the Harpstring Moon. You should be able to reach Fhirdiad by the end of the month. You have a bit under a week until we leave - ready your troops."

"Are you seriously going to fight Cornelia?" Uncle leans forward on Dimitri's blind side, his voice a squealing scratch of a nail against the wooden surface of the table. _"Cornelia?"_

"She killed you," Dimitri murmurs.

_"You_ killed me," he spits. "Have you forgotten? With these very paws of yours."

"Dimitri? Anything to add?"

They are looking at him. Waiting for an answer. Dimitri can only shake his head, choking on the reek of rot.

"Ah. Well," Claude sweeps his gaze across the table. "You all know what to do. If anything else needs to be discussed before the departure, we will let you know."

A short bustle as people collect their things and leave, chatting among themselves. Nobody stops by Dimitri's spot where he sits with his shoulders hunched so that the cloak almost envelops his head.

“Claude,” he calls once most people have already left.

Claude was rifling through the papers earlier but got engrossed in reading something, leaning his hip against the table. He hums distractedly, his eyes scanning the page, but eventually remembers himself and manages to tear his gaze away from it.

“You said something?”

Hilda, the last in the room apart from them, pauses in the doorway, but Claude waves her on.

“Yes. Uh…” How on earth does he say it? “Going to Derdriu is…not a good idea.”

Claude cocks an eyebrow, puts the page down, almost making Dimitri shift under his sudden and full attention. “And why is that?”

An ornate signal tower above the docks, its stonework like delicate lace, bleached white by the sun. Claws grabbing at it as the heavy body drags itself upwards, its limp wing catching between thin pillars.

The ships are burning. The fire crawls along the water, suffocating its wrinkled surface.

“It is too dangerous.”

As far as explanations go, this is not one at all, and Claude seems to be of the same opinion. His smile turns sly, curious. “Interesting. Do you know something I don’t, Your Princeliness?”

He does. But he cannot explain it.

“Just…” Dimitri sighs, flexes his hands uselessly, as if he could pluck something out of the air and offer it to Claude. The visions knock against the inside of his skull, drip blood down the backs of his eyes. “Just, please. Trust me.”

“Some might say I’ve already put too much trust in you.” Claude replies in contemplation. “Some _have,_ in fact.”

Dimitri suppresses a wince. The accusation is not - unwarranted.

Claude sighs. “Look, it’s _Derdriu,”_ his voice turns softer, smoothing the sting over. “It’s my capital. I know it inside and out, I know every urchin and every cat in its streets and ports. I’ll be _fine.”_ The smile returns, but softer, too, the curve of it not as knife-like. “But it’s _sweet_ of you to worry.”

Dimitri feels his face grow hot, grits his teeth. He needs Claude to _understand,_ but Claude - rightfully so - refuses to take him seriously.

“Take someone with you, at least,” he says, makes sure to hold Claude’s gaze as he does so. “Someone you trust with your life.”

Claude watches him, letting the pause stretch. Dimitri watches the shadows.

“Very well,” he concedes in the end. “If it makes you feel better.”

Dimitri nods, apprehensive but still somewhat relieved. He will take what victories he can get.

Outside the war room, a shadow is looming and bows its head in greeting.

“Your Highness.”

Dimitri whirls around, a gasp strangled in his throat - he already forgot…

The mound of stones shifts one last time, settling - a burrow, a cradle, a grave.

_“Dedue,”_ he finally breathes.

Dedue’s weathered skin is covered in healed, shiny scars, stark against the dark hue, and his posture is off, stiffer than Dimitri remembers it being, a tree’s rigid determination to stand tall as it is beaten down by storm after storm. He is carrying a cane, though not leaning on it now, holding it firmly by his side instead.

Real or not? Dimitri peers closer, searches his hardened face, waits for flickers and stutters of visions flaring out from his form, anything that might clue him in one way or another, but Dedue is still and quiet as he watches Dimitri scrutinize him. Here or not?

“You are alive,” Dimitri says, in a tone that is at least half question. “What - _how…”_

"It is good to see you alive, as well," he sees Dedue take him in, his gaze pausing just to the right of Dimitri's. Dedue frowns but does not ask.

"But I saw you," Dimitri refuses to relent - has relented too many times. Enough. "The cave in at the catacombs…"

"I was saved by Lord Rodrigue's people," Dedue replies. "They made it, after all, and managed to smuggle me away. I went back to Duscur for a while - the people we offered mercy to once were able to help me."

Dedue knows not to ask Dimitri if he remembers those people, spares him the humiliation, even now.

"Help you?" Dimitri asks and cannot help glancing down at the cane.

Dedue grows even more still. Dimitri watches him consider and discard several sentences before he settles on saying it as it is.

"I lost control of my legs, for a time. Regaining it took...much effort. Soon after I was strong enough to journey to Fraldarius across the frontline, Lord Rodrigue received Felix's letter."

A familiar knot twists in Dimitri's throat, but he refuses to swallow it. Refuses to shut his eye against the onslaught. _Feels_ the pressure of it, instead, the weight, the shape.

Dedue, devoured by the sudden darkness that opens like a chasm in Dimitri's eye. A nameless man, his only fault in looking too much like Dimitri; drugged or controlled or having his family threatened to keep him complacent. Felix seizing on the forest floor, a cracked shield.

"I am sorry," Dimitri chokes on his tightened throat. _Keep speaking. You must feel this through._ "Dedue - Goddess - I am so sorry."

An old, old pain. A five-year-old pain, overgrown with moss, sunken bone-deep.

Dedue shakes his head in gentle dismissal, watches him with concern. "Your eye…"

Dimitri returns the gesture, albeit more violently. He will not be distracted - this is not about him.

"I broke my promise to you," he says, struck suddenly by the memory of the ghost - of the disappointment and the guilt. "I promised to lead - and to rebuild - and I failed you. I left you behind. I was - lost."

He waits for the blow. He does not look away - he needs to see it coming.

Something softens in Dedue's expression. "You have not broken anything, Dimitri. We are going north, aren't we?"

Dimitri almost sways - catches himself with a hand against Dedue's shoulder. He does not put any weight on it, but Dedue pushes back anyway. Solid, real, _there._

"Yes," he says. "Yes - I will make it right by you. By everyone."

Dedue nods, and his eyes are a grounding force, and his ghost falls silent.

*

At the end of the day, Dimitri comes to the new infirmary. The door is open, so he knocks on the door jamb. 

“May I?”

Felix rolls his eyes but does not chase him out, and Dimitri enters the lair and finds a chair to sit down. An odd feeling comes over him when he is reminded of when their roles were reversed, when he was the one recovering in bed - though surely Felix never had reason to feel this uprooted, this uncertain.

Dimitri does not know what to say, really. Falls into the first step of a dance, into the safety of a script to guide him when he feels nothing but falling.

“How are you feeling?”

But it is a mistake, of course, just as pretense always is with Felix.

“Why are you here,” he drops instantly, severing the thread, watching Dimitri stumble in punishment.

The truth, then. Dimitri regains his footing - if Felix desires to spar, then they will spar. Honesty for honesty. “I wanted to know if you were alright.”

Felix snorts. “As if. One’d think you’d be halfway to Enbarr by now, turning yourself into an imperial pincushion.”

Is that why Felix came out to stop him? Is that what he thought was going to happen?

It is no longer important, however. Dimitri made a promise, and the seal of it is curled around his heart like a chain and a flourish of ink and a folded wing.

“Of course not,” he replies. Feels the chain tighten, the wing shift, and his heart flutters in response.

_“‘Of course’,”_ Felix snorts. “Wasn’t an ‘of course’ last time I checked. What the hell changed?”

Dimitri looks at Felix then, _really_ looks, sees the greyish, exhausted pallor of his face, the marble veins of lightning covering his skin, the effort he is putting into keeping his breath shallow - and how quickly he runs out of it now that Dimitri is forcing him to speak.

Felix scowls and looks away and only barely suppresses a wheeze, and Dimitri feels like crumbling. Felix’s body is under him, covered in mud, and when he leans down to check for a pulse, his skin is almost too hot to the touch, but rapidly cooling right as Dimitri presses his face against it. Felix is twitching, and opening his mouth, and his eyes are unseeing in the dark of the night, unseeing as death dulls their colour to burned brass. Dimitri breaks his ribs instead of just cracking them, pierces his lungs with their splinters, but even the pain does not wake Felix.

"Your heart, Felix," Dimitri says. A memory, now: night thrown violently into a moment of daylight, hair smelling like a thunderstorm, the dancing warp of charged air across the expanse of Felix's back. Terrifyingly real, terrifyingly close to all the times when it hits just a little stronger, the grip of it just a touch more vicious... 

Dimitri screws his eye shut, overwhelmed, grieving; the space before him is acutely empty and the world is ending. 

_‘You did die there,’_ Felix had said. Is this at all how he felt?

"What _about_ my heart," Felix snaps, alive; the sharpness of it is like a lash across Dimitri's face. 

He opens his eye again. Felix's burning gaze is inquisitive, irritated, impatient. Dimitri feels its needlepoint, the ‘before’ and ‘after’ that come from trying to stay balanced on the tip of a blade.

"It stopped," he says, desolate. "You nearly died." 

He knows immediately that it was, again, the wrong thing to say. Felix's face flits through something cut open and bleeding and raw before the rage comes.

"Oh _piss off,"_ he hisses, and suddenly he is upright and leaning into Dimitri's face, and his eyes are brighter than the fire pits of hell and twice as violent. "Old man thinks it’s our duty to die for you, but I'm not him.” - _‘I’m not G...’ -_ “I don't _care_ about duty."

But Dimitri sees it, sees all of it: in all the times when Felix is hit, it is not because he was too slow to get out of the way of a volley meant for Dimitri.

Felix is always, inescapably, tied to him, with chains forged from the iron of their very blood.

And Dimitri cannot break them. Try as he might, he cannot release Felix from the bindings of their fate. 

A shield by his side or a sword at his throat, Felix is always there. 

"Felix," Dimitri calls, and stands up as well, and lifts his hands, and does not know what to do with them. What was he planning? To _soothe_ Felix, the very person always in a vicious fight against whichever way Dimitri can flay himself open for him? Who tears at him to be honest but does not want his honesty either? "Felix - _listen."_

"Wha- _t,"_ Felix snaps with a click of his teeth, crosses his arms in a sudden, violent motion and winces as they press against his ribs. 

"We are marching for Fhirdiad," Dimitri reaches out across the chasm, heart in his throat, in his hands, offered on the tips of his fingers. He has to do it this way - there is no other.

Felix stares at him, still fierce, and spiteful, and betrayed. A single word slaps his hands away. _"Liar."_

Dimitri shakes his head. The monastery, the ancient dwelling of the Goddess, their silent witness, sighs around them.

Maybe She is listening. Maybe, just this once, She is listening.

"I swear to you. I _swear_ it _._ "

Felix is unrelenting, already recovering from his brief loss of balance. _"Why."_

Dimitri is pinned down by the scorching intensity of Felix's eyes. He needs to say the truth, again. 

He steps across the chasm. 

"I need to do the right thing."

Felix tilts his head. Does not kick him down, but does not offer a foothold either. "What about Edelgard?" 

Something massive and dark is rising from Enbarr, spreading across the land, claiming more people as it goes. But the path solidifies under Dimitri's feet, a path leading north, leading _home_ , and he knows the truth of it as he stands before Felix's judgement, before the burning, roiling heat of his gaze that strips away everything he is not. 

"The day will come when I take her head," he says, both a prophecy and an oath. "But…" 

Dimitri trails off, inspects the vulnerable, exposed pull in his chest. _'The are fighting' - 'They are dying' - 'They are waiting for me'._

"I need to help them. I want to. This is my choice." 

Felix places his hands on his waist, jerks his chin up. Considers him carefully, and Dimitri forces himself to relax under the scrutiny, to let Felix find what he is looking for. Praying that he will, wanting him to, even if a part of him still bristles angrily at the idea of being laid so bare before his ire.

After a long, breathless moment, Felix drops his head into his palm, brushes his bangs away from his forehead when he looks at Dimitri again. Something small trespasses in his gaze before it solidifies into the smooth stillness again, drops of sunlight trapped under an ocean wave. 

"I’ll believe it when I see it," Felix says finally, and it would sound like a dismissal to anyone who did not know him, but Dimitri's heart soars at the promise in it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> on the topic of CWs:  
> \- injury: electrocution and that thing where you fracture the ribs during CPR


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Go ahead, then," Cornelia turns him around, nudges him away from her - towards Felix. The hairs on his nape stand on end at the sound of her cloying voice behind his back. "You and I both know how violent you can be. Show him."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter, some spoilery details in the endnotes:
> 
> \- war violence, injuries  
> \- war-related visions  
> \- physical control  
> \- mental distress, panic attack  
> \- character death  
> \- discussion of sexual assault  
> \- ritualistic self-harm

_if only my golden general knew,_

_if only he believed in navigation by heart,_

_he would have found me,_

_he would have saved me_

The city walls of Fhirdiad rose during the reign of Loog's successor, Queen Aelwen, who replaced Loog's constructions of Faerghan pine with sturdy steel-grey basalt mined from the shores of the Pitted Sea. 

Dimitri used to know their battlements intimately after spending countless hours running along the walkways, climbing the catapults, playing hide-and-seek in the towers when his friends visited. 

Most of those memories and the details of the few that remain are long lost to the fog. 

Now, the worn flagstones of the walkway are red and slick, to the point where the very real risk of slipping becomes the surest precursor of death. Dimitri slices Areadbhar across an imperial soldier's neck, squinting as blood sprays his face, the hot droplets cooling rapidly on his skin. 

He wonders if he is going to remember _this._

Taking to the walls, dropping the drawbridge ended up being an easy task between Dimitri's and Rodrigue's knowledge of the layout and the numerous fliers carrying people up onto the walls. Soon, the south-western stretch will be completely under their control. From there, it is not a long way to the castle - there is little doubt that Cornelia would prefer it to the palace as the last line of defence.

Ingrid has dropped Dimitri off earlier, her people bringing up Felix, two heralds, a bannerman, and four members of the guard - all from Rodrigue's troops - while to both their sides Hilda's wyvern riders carried up fighters and close combat mages. Dimitri begrudgingly accepted the guard, for he will shake them off soon enough in the heat of the battle anyway - and the heralds are useful, of course - but has put his foot down when Rodrigue tried to insist on a squire or a mount.

Horses are skittish around him now. As for people…

"Your Highness!" one of the heralds calls to Dimitri from his spot near the outer edge as he dispatches another imperial. "Molinaro's group is ready to advance. They attempted to meet with Kirsten's brawlers before the gates, but the enemy's knights separated them. Orders?"

Dimitri's mind is turning as his body continues on its own, following the steps of a well-learned dance. He leans out of the way of a hammer and punishes the wielder when they leave their side unprotected in their mad swing.

Last time he gave orders… Last time he led people…

Dimitri's eye searches for Felix - and finds him right in the moment when Felix honest-to-Goddess _runs three steps_ up the wall and jumps and twists in the air and flies towards two enemy soldiers like a bird of prey, sword raised and eyes wild. Bodies hit the ground and he lands on his feet with an effortless grace, already turning to hunt down the next target. This is not a move Dimitri has seen from Felix before, but his thoughts are wrenched back to the matter at hand. Last time Dimitri tried to steer the events like this, wielding an army, it only ended up bringing about more deaths. Does he have any right to decide people's fates?

But as their prince - does he have any _choice?_

He is not used to it anymore. Not used to playing the games of tactics - to keeping his awareness any wider than the next swing of his weapon. His head hurts.

The sea of ghosts froths beneath Dimitri when he chances a glance from the wall. What would he do if he did not see the myriads of outcomes? If this curse did not hang over his head, slithered around his neck?

"Tell Molinaro to regroup as intended," he huffs, switching the grip on Areadbhar as another soldier engages him. "Then prepare to follow the Fraldarius banner inside!"

The soldier falls. Something catches Dimitri's attention and he looks up, shielding his eye from the midday sun. Ingrid's troops rise up from beneath the city walls and arch overhead in tight formations, aiming to fly inside.

Dimitri follows the trajectory, squinting when the sunlight floods his eye. His vision clears and…

A hive of arrows rises, heavy and angry and fast. Ingrid's pegasus is hit between the ribs and she is thrown from the saddle as the animal thrashes and dies, and they are so high up in the sky that it feels like she will forsake the ground for good.

Her fliers are dying around her under the onslaught, too. Feathers and arrows and bodies are raining from the sky, spiraling down, and down, and down. 

An ambush. Ingrid is going to fly straight into an ambush.

_"Archers!"_ he bellows, turns to the other herald as she is already fumbling for her horn. "Tell Galatea to pull her regiments west, von Aegir - ready the heavy cavalry! Charge over the bridge!"

The horn sounds, high and clear. Under the curved dome of the sky, Ingrid veers sharply left. 

Dimitri breathes.

The ground grows treacherous as the bodies pile up. Dimitri dances and dances and dances until his feet become numb and his breaths begin to wheeze and his eye loses focus. 

"How are you feeling, beast?" Uncle sneers in his ear. "Tired of walking on your hind legs yet?"

Dimitri jerks away, nearly stumbling. The tidal pull calls with a promise of sweet, bloody oblivion. Dimitri looks at it - feels the hypnotising pressure of it looking back - forces himself to step away. 

The wall is secure.

Fliers whirl through the sky again, take the fighters down into the city, bring up snipers and long range mages instead - Annette and Lysithea spread their battalions out along the wall, some taking the positions at the conquered ballistae. Ashe and Ignatz direct their people to shoot from behind them, not needing a line of sight. Close range mages, their charges exhausted, pocket the sigil binds and switch to quickfire spells for field healing and restoration.

One of Seteth's knights rises up from the streets until her wyvern is level with the wall.

"Fraldarius and Gautier troops have secured the way to the inner city!” she shouts. “Engaging Fhirdian garrisons now!"

Dimitri grits his teeth. She is making them fight.

He thinks, abruptly, about the nameless man on the podium. The expanse of the sky above him grows heavy and narrow. 

He looks resolutely back at the knight.

"Allow them the chance to disobey Cornelia's orders!" he shouts back, pitching his voice to make it carry. He needs the troops to listen, and quickly. "If they persist, subdue them where possible. We are _not_ spilling unnecessary blood!"

The knight nods and dives in a tight spiral, disappearing from view among the columns of smoke. The Fire spells must be catching onto timber. They need to hurry before the whole city burns.

Felix is looking at him when Dimitri turns, something unreadable and unbearable in the strained lines of his face. Blinks, shakes it off, moves - and the moment is gone. Dimitri almost leans towards him, pulled like a stalk towards the cascading glare of the sun. Looks towards the castle instead, the towers on the top concealing the observation deck from clear view. It is the best vantage point of the inner city, offering a wide angle and almost perfectly hiding the observer within its spiked half-wall. Cornelia will be there.

It is time.

Dimitri looks for Annette - they have talked about this briefly on the march. She knows that he will ask for her help here. Sometimes she is stuck fighting on the ground, sometimes they are distracted by something else, but most of them, most of them...

The very earth groans, letting out a long, stuttering gasp of a tortured beast.

A shudder goes through the ground, races up the walls and into their bones, stokes Dimitri's headache, mocking, jarring.

In the city, gigantic contraptions rise to their feet, heavy metallic warriors in plated armour. Raise their maces as tall as the ancient poplar trees lining the streets.

For a moment, Dimitri can only stare as his blood runs cold, inhales the primal burst of fear, a predator freezing before a bigger predator. They cannot possibly be alive, this cannot be…

"What the _fuck,"_ Felix swears quietly next to him, jerking him out of his stupor. "What is that - Dark magic?"

"It must be," Dimitri responds, and suddenly remembers, and the thought pierces him with a whole new level of coldness.

He turns to find a herald, near frantic, faster than all his ghosts. The woman is already by his side.

"Get the cavalry out!" he urges. "Pull them back!"

The swarm of riders bends and churns around the monstrous giants, and for one horrible moment Dimitri sees how the command reaches them too late, how they get trampled - smashed - burned to coals, a terrible writhing mass of humans and animals and metal filling the streets.

But the horn carries, and the rivers of riders split and weave their way out of the range and back, back, back.

Dimitri feels sick with relief, but the spark of it is short-lived.

"Annette! Lysithea!" he whips his head around, trying to spot them. One of Lysithea's mages calls to her attention as she is weaving a spell; Annette's eyes are already on him. "Can you take them on?"

_"Can_ we? Watch this!" Lysithea digs her heels into the drying flagstones and pushes her hands outwards. Clipped to her belt, a cross-shaped sigil bind glows a violent octarine. 

The ground underneath the closest contraption bucks up and warps and suddenly shoots up in spikes, impaling the giant. It twitches and groans, but the spikes hold, immovable, unnaturally strong.

Good. 

Dimitri turns to the other herald. "Rodrigue is fully in charge now, let everyone know to defer to him. Your task is to secure the inner city. I am going after Cornelia."

"With no backup? Are you _insane?"_ Felix yells over the rising howl of the horn.

Is he?

How is it going to go? If she gets to him first?

Dimitri's cloak flies around him, the fur sticking to his sweaty neck above the gorget - he refused to wear the armour Rodrigue has brought - the ghosts are all right, he has not earned it. He pierces someone with Areadbhar, flings it away together with the body: the claws are faster, crueler, messier - she always prefers him bestial…

Dimitri shudders, shifts his feet for better purchase. The leather of his gloves squeals around the lance. Bile is burning his throat. There is too much air around him, too much sky, too much.

This is why he needed Annette with him, but now…

"She controls the giants. The sooner I get to her - Felix - do you have any silencing spells?" he asks. "Strong ones? Or Knockouts?"

"I have two charges of Silence," Felix responds, his eyes narrowed. His hand goes to his belt. "Why?"

"She has a way of - taking control over me." The gauntlets press down on his forearms, steel traps holding his flesh between their teeth. "I cannot risk that."

He watches Felix look behind him, ahead - watches him come to the same conclusion he did. Annette or Lysithea would be a surer choice, but now...

But Annette's face is sharp and alien, and she conjures a purple arcanum, aiming it at his chest.

Dimitri shakes his head to clear his vision, feeling the ache build further up. Has no time to question it - has no time for anything.

"We need to go," he tells Felix, who is still watching him. "A Warp would be fastest."

"Why _you?"_ Felix ignores him. "If she can take over you - anyone else can go. _I_ can go."

_"No,"_ Dimitri almost recoils at the thought. Not Felix, not anyone. He is not letting her kill any more people. He will not die yet - it is safest for him to go. "It has to be me. I must - we have to leave."

"Tell me," Felix catches him by the upper arm when Dimitri tries to move past him. "Dimitri. Did you kill Rufus?"

Felix's gaze is fixed unshakably on him even as his jaw tenses and he fights the urge to look away. He is fire and blood and the first breath of a storm. Dimitri allows him the scrutiny, welcomes the crackle of lightning where the cool rot has been setting in.

"I did," he says. He is about as sure of it as he can be of anything. "But…"

Felix's eyes narrow into sharp, hateful slashes. "Cornelia?"

Dimitri nods. "Cornelia."

Another moment passes, and Felix looks away, lets his hand drop. Belatedly, Dimitri counts the touch. 

"Let's go, then."

Lysithea is closer to them, but she raises field after field of spikes like the dead from their disturbed graves. What little skin she has exposed is shiny with exertion, making the spell tattoos on her hands and wrists stand out stronger. They hurry towards Annette.

"Can you Warp us to the top of the castle?" Dimitri asks when they reach her.

Annette aborts calling on another arcanum and squints at the faraway building. After a moment of concentration, she gives a nervous hum.

"How well can you climb?"

"What?" Felix frowns.

Annette wrings her hands with a wince, a thumb pressing circles into a palm with a Wind tattoo in what looks like a nervous habit. "There's a shield around the top. It’s not physical but it definitely blocks incoming spells - see how the air shimmers? What I _can_ do is Warp you to a ledge beneath it - over there, look!"

They follow her pointing finger: a ring of stone has wrapped itself around the main tower, three or four meters from the top. The castle is old - the space between the stones has been worn away by the elements, creating a network of hand- and footholds.

Felix's frown turns into a scowl. "This is insanity."

Dimitri shakes his head slowly. Sometimes, yes, a grip slips. Most of the times though, trouble finds them later.

"You must live until Enbarr," Father reminds him, a cold skeletal grip on his shoulder. "Don't you dare forget this."

Dimitri shuts his eye. Breathes. Opens it again.

"The ledge works," he tells Annette, strapping Areadbhar to his back. "If you please."

With a nod, Annette reaches down to tap a silvery disc with a Lesser Translocation sigil on her belt, releasing the stored spell. A swirl of the arcanum, and Dimitri is nearly knocked off the narrow strip of weathered stone by a sudden gust of wind, biting and sharp. He plasters himself against the wall, trying to calm his turning stomach. Felix is further pinning him down with a glare from much the same position a couple of meters away.

_"Absolute genius,"_ he hisses. "Flames, I hate this. Now what?"

Dimitri unsticks his head from the wall, fighting the press of the wind, and looks up. It really is a very short distance. He tries not to think about the distance in the _other_ direction.

He grins at Felix, wolfish. "Now we climb."

They make it up and over the wall with varying degrees of grace: Felix jumps soundlessly down onto the floor while Dimitri barely avoids falling on his face.

The roof terrace they reached is a flat cross-section of the biggest tower, connected to the jutting out observation deck by a few steps. They crouch, hiding from the deck behind the curve of the half-wall. The space is empty: Cornelia must have people down on the stairs, but up here she has evidently decided that nobody would be quite so bold - or foolish.

She will be alone on the deck, Dimitri knows, busy orchestrating the giants. How is this going to go? What is going to happen?

He gestures at Felix to follow, and the two of them make their way along the wall, the wind's furious howling concealing the sounds of their movements. Before the steps, Dimitri pulls Areadbhar from his back. 

Words reach them, melodic and terrible, the weaving of the spells hanging heavy in the air, ethereal to the wind.

Beside Dimitri, Felix touches an engraved phalanx bone sewn into his belt, presses his palms together, pulls them apart to reveal thin silvery strands that quickly fashion themselves into an approximation of a shimmering net.

Dimitri nods, feeling his thighs tense in anticipation of a lunge. They will have to act fast. She will not allow second chances - the element of surprise is the one thing on their side.

"Well _hello there,_ Little Prince!"

The wind dies in an instant, smothered by a sudden, unnatural calm. Air turns to stone in Dimitri's lungs, pulls him towards the ground.

He is still looking at Felix - his eyes are wide, alight with the clearest gold of the sun trapped in the irises.

She could not have seen them - _they_ have not seen her…

"Did you really think I wouldn't notice you up close and personal? You _wound_ me."

Her voice comes from the deck, but it does not sound like she is moving towards them.

And then, she does not need to.

Dimitri's hands seize - release Areadbhar, letting it clatter to the ground - seize again. He is pulled into a low crouch, jerked to a side - suddenly light-headed, his heart hammering in his throat. His fingers scrape against the stone floor, the friction overpowered easily by the brute force of the spell.

_Oh no._

Then, finally, the footsteps - languid, unhurried, ominous, each sound driving nails into Dimitri's burning head.

"So…I heard you were alive. I shouldn't be surprised: vermin always find a way."

Dimitri's hands spasm so violently they almost slide from under him, forcing him on his knees. He dips his head to try to look at Felix from under his arm, and as they lock gazes, he realizes one thing - and knows that Felix realized it, too.

Cornelia thinks he came alone.

They have only one moment to make the decision. Felix makes it in half that time. He jumps up from his crouched position and shoots Silence at Cornelia…

...and misses.

_"Now,"_ Cornelia laughs, surprised - but also amused, dangerously so. "You brought _another_ _friend_ to sacrifice, how sweet. Shall we play?"

Dimitri is yanked to his feet, pushed and pulled by the force gripping his gauntlets - his left elbow cracks from the sudden movement, making him grunt in pain. His voice will not obey him, his jaws will not unclench, his spine feels frozen. With a jolt, Dimitri finally recognizes the signs: he is terrified.

Cornelia stands on top of the stairs. Her hair is longer, her attire is richer - her face is exactly the same as the one haunting Dimitri's infrequent, fitful rest. He is torn in two by the impulse to look away and the inability to do so. His blood is turning to ashes, vessel by curdling vessel.

"Go ahead, then," Cornelia turns him around, nudges him away from her - towards Felix. The hairs on his nape stand on end at the sound of her cloying voice behind his back. "You and I both know how violent you can be. Show him."

They face each other now. Dimitri tugs at the bonds, searches for any give, anything at all, but the spell refuses to budge.

Uncle's blood is pooling beneath his messily scraped out husk.

Goddess, what an _idiot_ he was - why did he ever think that this would work?

Felix - Felix needs to understand that Dimitri will not be able to stop. If he tries to reason with him, he will die here. If he tries to fight, he will die.

Felix's fingers tighten on his sword, eyes fixed on Dimitri's advance, as slow and unstoppable as a landslide. He sees Felix go through the possible actions, sees him come to each conclusion in turn. His hand shifts on the hilt - he has decided to fight.

Dimitri's fingers flex so, so slowly, digit by digit. He knows how this fight will go.

He gives in here, shuts his eye. Some things he cannot bear witnessing even now.

A dry crackle of magic, and something quick and bright sizzles over Dimitri's head, painting the inside of his eyelid a burst of white against the blackness.

Cornelia's gasp is choked off into blunted silence. A thunderous groan rolls across the city beneath them as the giants lurch to a screeching halt, the sound of an ancient deity dying under the weight of its own body. The possessive control falls from Dimitri's hands, and a convulsive wave passes through his muscles as the spell in the gauntlets concentrates and resettles. His eye flies open and he pushes himself off the ground, whirling around.

Cornelia is gasping, clawing at her soundless throat. Her eyes are bulging in impotent fury on a distorted face as she thrashes so hard against the hold of the spell that she barely keeps her footing on top of the stairs, but not a grunt, not a whine can escape her twisted mouth.

Felix steps up next to Dimitri, sword raised, and his eyes are harder than the cool facets of gemstones, and his lips are pulled back in a vicious snarl.

"Dimitri, now!" he yells, voice piercing the still air, disrupting the trance of Cornelia's speechlessness. He turns to look at him, at his hunched form. "Boar!"

Dimitri cannot move. Areadbhar lies on the ground a few steps away, and those steps are insurmountable. He cannot will himself to do anything. 

What is wrong with him? Cornelia no longer controls him, he knows it.

Dimitri watches her face as it morphs from one grimace into the next, each one more terrible than the one before it. She is beside herself, trapped and humiliated - but soon she will remember that she is more than spells. Soon, she will remember that she has hands, and nails, and teeth. Soon, she will reach out towards them. Soon, the spell will break.

Dimitri tries to swallow, but his throat is dry and cracking. A tingling cold spreads along his spine; his head grows heavy, his tongue too hot for his mouth. They are back in the dungeon, and he is chained to the wall, and there is nothing at all he can do. 

Dimitri is shaking. His heart is hammering so fast that he cannot tell the beats apart, so fast that it feels like it is not beating at all.

As if through water, strange and faraway, he hears Felix curse. And then he charges.

The movement pushes at the thick air, making Dimitri sway, and he almost falls but manages to catch himself at the last moment.

Felix flies up the steps and descends upon Cornelia like a vengeful spirit, and his wrath sings in every strike he lands on her quivering body. Their shapes twist around each other, framed by the half-walls on either side against the backdrop of the sky, but the spectacle is a pantomime, punctuated only by vicious, meaty sounds of steel tearing flesh, slicing through bone.

Felix is relentless, delivering hit after hit: on Cornelia’s torso, her shoulders, her raised hands. The blood slicks the floor - red - for some reason, Dimitri is surprised to see that it is red - and Cornelia slips and falls backwards like a puppet with its strings cut, hitting her head with a crack. The spell breaks in time for her to cry out - but only once. Felix does not allow her the reprieve of screaming. The sword falls again.

The world is tilting, and Dimitri moves towards it this time, his hip heavily meeting the stone floor. He sags into a sitting position, breathless, his vision swimming, his spine torn out.

Felix sinks his sword into Cornelia's chest, and this time, he leaves it there, keeping the palm of his hand on the top of the hilt for a long, shuddering moment. 

The sounds of the city have faded away some time ago - Dimitri does not know when. He cannot even hear his own breathing, his own heartbeat. He can only watch, his vision blurry, as Cornelia's chest stays still, pinned by the streaked blade. A limp arm is hanging off the top step - Dimitri waits to see if it twitches.

Will she become another ghost? Oh please no, anything but that.

From the silence, footsteps emerge and come closer and closer until Felix lowers himself onto his knees in front of Dimitri, breaking his line of sight. He is breathing heavily, the air pushing out of him in angry huffs.

"Are you alright? Is the spell broken?" Felix's voice is so faint. As if he is not there at all, a ghost or a vision. He moves again when Dimitri tries to shift so he can watch Cornelia, just in case she… "She is dead. Boar. Answer me."

Dimitri tries to shake his head, but it only lolls uselessly, beaten down by the thrum of the pain enveloping his brain. 

Felix's frown deepens. "We need to leave before they come looking. Let's go."

He gets up to grab his sword. With a grunt, he hauls Dimitri to his feet, letting him lean on him - the cracked elbow twinges, pain shooting up Dimitri's forearm but dying soundlessly in his hand. He huffs, too dazed to articulate it. His legs refuse to cooperate.

"Dimitri - boar - _fuck_ \- work with me here!" Felix snarls, his right arm a brand around Dimitri's waist, his left a vise grip on his wrist. He is almost dragging him towards the stairs. "We need to _go!"_

"I can't," Dimitri breathes. He is still so blurry around the edges - it feels like he is going to fall right through Felix, vibrate right out of his smeared skin. "I can't, Felix, please…"

Felix stops them, shifts to look at Dimitri for a long moment. Grunts again and adjusts his grip, steering them towards the shelter of the half-wall instead.

Dimitri is lowered to the ground with his back propped up against the wall. The winding steps from inside the tower end on their right side, facing away: if anyone comes up, Dimitri and Felix will see them first.

Well - Felix will. Dimitri is too shaken, his void too insistent.

"Are you wounded?" Felix's voice swims to him through the fog. "Boar - talk to me. I need to know."

"The spell is gone," he manages around the tongue filling his entire mouth. "I'm fine, I…" Felix is kneeling by his left side, and Dimitri tries to reach out to him - Goddess, why? - but his elbow explodes in a bright, clear note of pain, and whatever he was going to say breaks off into a growl.

Felix homes in on his distress, pulls off his thin gloves to run his fingers along Dimitri's arm. Pauses at the elbow, and a small cloud of light billows between his cupped hands, and the gentle coolness numbs the note into silence.

Felix sits back on his heels. "This was really fucking stupid," he mutters, glaring at something off to the side. "Why the fuck did you think this was a good idea."

Dimitri only loll-shakes his head again. His every nerve is wrapped in cotton. The fear is wearing off - they are safe, they are safe, Felix killed her - but it is getting even harder to think through the fog that comes after. He is so tired. 

Felix lets out a sigh, looking over his hunched form, then turns around and sits down properly, his right hip nudging Dimitri's left knee.

Dimitri cannot watch Cornelia like this, her body hidden from view by Felix's broad, rigid back. But Felix is facing that way now - he will be able to see.

Dimitri closes his eye, ponders the swirls of darkness under both eyelids.

Time passes.

Awareness comes back slowly, laboriously. There is hard stone under his backside, hard stone squeezing his cloak against the ridges of his armour - he hears the cloth and the fur whisper when his shoulders move. The wind is picking up again - no more eerie stillness, no more raging gusts. The spring wind of Fhirdiad, blowing in from the wetlands. The sun is sliding across the flagstones in puffy spots of pale light.

His back is secure. Felix is watching over the rest. Felix's hip is still pressing into Dimitri's knee, a constant, grounding point of contact between them. Dimitri counts it. And counts it. And counts it.

Nobody comes to check on Cornelia, to ask for more orders or relay any news.

Dimitri realizes the reason for it when the horns sound down in the city, a great chorus of solemn, joyful voices. Dimitri recognizes the booming tide call of the Fraldarius horn, the moorhen trill of Galatea, the kulning hum of Gautier - does not recognize many of the other signals, but knows them to be those of the Alliance.

They won.

They took back Fhirdiad.

Felix is sitting up even straighter than before, alert, listening as the chorus rises and rises and rises before falling abruptly silent.

Then, the cheers go up, thousands of people screaming their victory, their luck, their very life, the sounds tearing themselves out of their still-breathing throats. The bells of Saviour's Cathedral toll, piercing the heavens like arrowheads, higher and higher.

Felix twists sharply to look at Dimitri over his shoulder, his burning eye a slit of liquid amber. Dimitri nods at him.

They won.

He should be feeling something.

A rush of wings, feathers whistling as they slice through the air, and Ingrid rises over the wall, landing her pegasus on the flagstones. Two members of her guard touch down nearby.

"Your Highness?" he calls out, elation marred briefly by alarm.

Felix gets to his feet, and Dimitri mourns the loss of contact.

"The boar got hit by a spell," Felix grumbles. "Leave him alone."

"A spell?" Ingrid was moving to dismount, but now she collects the reins again, ready to take off. "If Dimitri needs a healer I can…"

"He's _fine."_

Dimitri pushes himself up, grips the wall for support as he forces himself not to sway; the elbow holds. Ingrid has her lips pursed in concern when he looks at her.

"There is no need, thank you," he tells her. "What is the situation?"

"Oh," Ingrid shifts in the saddle, shifts into a different mindset in the same motion. "The city is yours. The palace is being cleared out by the brawlers as we speak; the castle is secured. Lord Rodrigue is waiting for you at the foot of it. We are here to bring you both down, if you wish."

Dimitri - emphatically does not. The thought of riding a pegasus right now fills him with nausea and dread.

"You are so bloody weak," Father looks down on him with contempt lining his hardened face. "You were supposed to lead them down there, and instead you couldn't even kill one woman. Some leader you are."

Dimitri clenches his jaw against the press of the headache. He is right - of course he is. This was a stupid, foolish, dangerous gamble, and Felix was forced to pick up his slack when he inevitably fell short.

What on earth came over him? Is there no limit to his weakness? To his blindness?

Everyone is looking at him expectantly. Dimitri pushes himself away from the wall, squares his shoulders. This is his army. He is their leader. This is not the time to feel fragile - it never will be again. He has forfeited the right to that luxury long, long ago.

"That will not be necessary - let your mounts rest," Dimitri remembers to reply to Ingrid. "We will take the stairs."

"As you wish," Ingrid responds. "I will tell everyone to expect you on the ground, then."

With that, the pegasi take off, Dimitri retrieves Areadbhar, and the two of them head towards the stairs.

"Are you alright?" Dimitri asks Felix, stopping just before the first step. He has to ask.

Felix scoffs quietly in what sounds like disbelief. He does not look at him, shifting instead on his feet in obvious impatience. Dimitri's heart falls.

Felix must be disappointed in him for freezing up before Cornelia the way he did. For not fighting the spell - or maybe for not shaking off the aftershocks quickly enough.

By all laws, Dimitri should be used to disappointing Felix by now. Should stop counting the notches on his tattered heart.

In silence, they descend into the belly of the conquered castle.

*

People cheer for him the moment he steps out of the door. Cheer despite his blood-soaked hands, his maw of a beast, his legion of ghosts.

Dimitri nearly sways under the tidal wave, feels close to shattering all over again.

*

Dimitri will not be crowned yet. His job is not finished, and he cannot accept the crown until it is.

And - it will only end up a waste once they have to decide on a new ruler. A new dynasty.

*

The palace grounds are as much of a mess as the rest of Fhirdiad seems to be. Ruined by Cornelia's cruelty, starved by her negligence, ravaged by the battle. They cleared out the bodies from the grounds and the adjacent streets, began constructing pyres outside the city walls, and the rubble was removed from the hall as the palace hastily prepares for a feast. But Dimitri knows - has seen it himself - that outside, Fhirdiad is drowning in corpses. On the crest of summer, the nights will be quick to grow warm - they need to burn the bodies as soon as possible.

And there will be more bodies still: in the east, the Margrave and Lord Nicholas are rounding up the remainder of Cornelia's troops. But magpies have been sent to them, and Dimitri has little doubt that the enemy has received the news as well - which means that both sides know how this is going to end. It is only a matter of time.

Lady Rhea was not found in Fhirdiad, of course. But Dimitri already knew that. Most of the times she is discovered in Enbarr. Most of _those_ times, she is still alive.

Something itches in him insistently, urges him to grab the lance, to go east - to go _south_ \- but his troops are tired. His troops are tired and need at least a short rest, a chance to recuperate and to bask in their survival. And now, curiously, Dimitri finds himself willing to wait.

Instead, he fields a billion organisational questions from the staff of the palace, bizarre in their pretense at normalcy. What does it matter what kind of flower arrangements would be fitting for the feast? They scrounged up pieces of furniture from the entire building and most of the silver cutlery has mysteriously disappeared, and there is only the most bitter Daphneli wine left in the cleared out cellars - what difference would the flowers make? 

But Dimitri answers, and answers, and answers, his head spinning, until Raphael appears and offers to take over the kitchen people - the Master of the Household has vanished together with the few high ranking imperials that managed to escape Fhirdiad - and Rodrigue, with his shoulder bandaged but no less energetic for it, steps in to direct the rest of the staff.

There is still so much to be done, starting with writing a census of the entire city - and then the country - and ending with deciding what to do with captured imperial soldiers. Dimitri does not want their blood, but neither can he leave them to rot in prisons forever - even thinking about it makes his headache worse.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow, there will still be time to obsess over everything.

So tonight, he escapes the clamour of people in the short break before the feast, slinking away to the medicinal herbs garden planted by Mother. 

He goes alone - Dedue stayed stubbornly by his side after the battle ended, but Dimitri noted the hollow-eyed tiredness in him, the rigidity of his gait. Dedue needs rest - and surely he, too, has memories of Fhirdiad he needs to reconcile.

Dimitri's mother, born Elaine Thalia Terfel, came from an old family of Dancers, well-respected and cherished in Fhirdiad for perpetuating the rare and intricate craft. Nobody in the family bore a Crest, but they had no need for it: the Crown doted on them anyway.

Elaine was an only child and Prince Lambert's peer, and she danced for his mother, Queen Meinir. Father wed her when he ascended the throne at the age of twenty-five, and since then, she danced for him.

They were in love, Dimitri was told, until the day she died. He has no memories of her, not really. He laments, sometimes, the emptiness where her ghost never was - he could have known her like this, at least. 

He remembers looking at the portrait of the two of them: Father in the Blaiddyd wartime armour, with his hand on the back of a chair in which Mother sat in her full Dancer outfit, the battle fans resting in her lap. She had pale wavy hair, steely grey eyes, a big nose - Dimitri used to wonder if he would grow up looking like her at all.

Neither Queen Meinir's, nor Father's rule was effortless: each has seen their share of battles, and Mother has seen both. She was deeply rattled by it: even though she herself never had to kill other than in self-defence, her heart longed to heal in a deep-seated need to atone for bloodshed that was not her own. But all the talent for magic, healing or otherwise, has been bred out of the Terfel bloodline, the cultivation of the dancing skill allowing for no distractions, and so Mother found herself turning to the art of herbal remedies.

The garden is overgrown, willows and camphor trees and bushes of honeysuckle crowding the paths, blocking out the sky. Runes were carved into the outer fence when Mother first started her project. The runes keep the plants healthy and luscious, and coax their juices into motion regardless of the turn of the year and the arch of the moon. Their ancient spellwork runs as potent as it did since before Dimitri's birth - will weave its net just as surely long after he is gone.

Dimitri steps over a patch of poppies, over the timid sprouts and the flaming blooms and the tiny rattling drums. The soil under his feet writhes and crawls with life, ripples with flowers and berries. Furthermore, every grass, every bush, every branching tree quivers with visions around him, growing and dying and being gently pruned and plucked and harvested.

But in this reality, nobody has set foot in here in the last five years, it would seem.

No, not nobody: the flowerbeds for dragonbane, nightshade, mandrake, strychnos have been harvested clean. Somebody has been working on poisons - Dimitri sees transparent hands reaching for the plants before the vision fades, lost in the swelling gasps of the greenery. Undeserving hand, defiling the garden. 

Dimitri forces himself to breathe. She is dead. 

Dimitri has often wondered if he should be able to feel Mother's presence in a place she had loved so dearly. But he does not remember being here with her, and so nothing is called to the surface when he tries to listen.

Still, the smells of the garden were always a comfort to Dimitri, their richness a balm especially after he lost his sense of taste to the nightmare of Duscur - though they certainly aggravated his headache, too, just as they do now. He would often escape here when the world grew too loud and too numb, allowed himself to be briefly distracted by the clean, clear ache that came from the scents, to be soothed by the sway of the plants, by the life bursting insistently from the soil even when everything in him felt like letting himself be claimed by it. 

How easy it would be, how terribly simple. His heart sighs in familiar longing.

Dimitri picks his aimless, winding way through the covers of wormwood and monkshood and haselwort. The air is growing dark - the nights are short now as the year climbs towards the luminous peak of summer, but this day has lasted forever.

In this twilight, Dimitri nearly steps on Felix, who is sitting on a low stone barrier that used to separate the path from the flowerbeds back when any of that mattered. Felix is wearing dark clothes, and the barrier he sits on is so low that he is contorted into a crouch that simply _must_ be uncomfortable - and yet here he is, sitting among the curls of basil and bay and feverfew that Dimitri had consumed fistful by a desperate fistful until he realized that his headaches would not be cured.

"Oh! Felix," Dimitri says. "I did not expect to find you here."

Felix shrugs. He does not look surprised in the least. _"I_ did."

Maybe some habits are harder to break than most.

Felix cries here sometimes, Dimitri realizes with a jolt. The long-built dam, steely and uncompromising, finally gives way and he cries in the times Rodrigue is dead - dead because - why?

Rodrigue is alive. Felix's eyes are dry when they snap to Dimitri's and immediately away. 

Rodrigue is alive - who is paying for this? Who has already paid?

Dimitri stands there, suddenly unsure what to do. He was not anticipating company, too distracted with the plants weaving themselves into the twilight.

"We need to talk," Felix is frowning up at him. "About what happened."

The heady air curdles suddenly in Dimitri's mouth. He does not want to, not really. Not now. Preferably, not ever.

But he glances behind himself, lowers himself carefully onto another stretch of the stonework diagonally across from Felix - and, yes, it truly is uncomfortable. The waistband of the pants he has changed into is digging into his stomach - a feeling he has forgotten during his years of starvation - and his knees immediately begin to ache from the harsh angle. Dimitri stretches them out carefully - he has learned to be cautious in the garden very early on, a clumsy but desperate refugee in the world of fragile, gentle things. He did not even dare to keep the shell of his armour on. 

Fluffy sprouts of camomile sigh against his gloved hands.

For a minute, they just sit there, Dimitri's feet sinking slowly into the loose carpet of green. Felix's are already covered, the garden's claim quiet and graceful. 

"What exactly did she do to you?" Felix breaks the silence like he cannot keep it whole anymore. "Did she mess up your head? Was she - turning you into a beast? She mentioned…"

Felix trails off. Dimitri does not remember what she had said. Remembers only the burning look in Felix's narrowed eyes as he watched Dimitri's convulsing body. The recognition - the resignation - the hatred. 

Dimitri chooses his words with care. "She - created a spell. A long time ago. And because it was her own spellwork, she could - manipulate it. Pretty severely, as you might have noticed," he cannot help an awkward laugh.

The gauntlets are cool on his forearms, tight on his fingers.

“What kind of spell?” Felix asks, but Dimitri only shakes his head. Talking about Cornelia is already too much.

He sees Felix's mind working. Remembers the two of them on the roof terrace, Felix's hard face when he dropped into a feral crouch on the flagstones.

"So does that mean - when we were children… In the west and - other times…" He is hurting - the words sound like nails scratching his throat, kept inside long enough to begin rusting. 

The ferocity with which Felix has slaughtered her - was it because he thought that _she_ was the reason Dimitri was - is - like this? Is he hopeful, now, because he thinks he found someone to blame?

Is he afraid, then, to face his own decision to hate Dimitri for so many years?

"No," Dimitri kills him; absolves him. Softly. "That was all me, I'm afraid."

The broken man, the rabid beast. Two faces, both his, neither fitting too well.

Felix closes his eyes for a moment; Dimitri watches the muscle in his temple spasm with tension. Felix was probably hoping for answers, not for more questions. This is too much - Dimitri should not be witnessing this. He looks down, runs his fingers through the camomile. It swirls gently, melts into the settling murk.

"What did she do to you?" Felix asks again; something painful spills out between the words. Why does he keep asking this? "After I broke the spell, you still…"

Oh.

There is damp, slimy stone behind his bruised back, leeching the heat, and it wrenches a shiver out of him.

Dimitri sees the moment Felix catches the change in him; chases it, presses in.

"Dimitri," he warns; a twig of honeysuckle waves in his face as he leans in, and he smacks it forcefully away: he will not be distracted. _"What did she do."_

Dimitri breathes. Breathes. Shifts his feet, just to feel the resistance and give of thin plant bodies, so much softer, so much easier to break. Rubs a camomile stem between his fingers, lifts his hand jerkily to smell the astringent juice. _Stay in the moment._

He feels, again, unbearably fragile. The strands of plants crawl into the cracks of him, pull him deftly further apart.

How wondrous it would be, to be consumed by their breathing shroud. 

"It doesn't matter," he tries futilely. His heart falls. "It wasn't a big deal."

Why _does_ it matter so much? It was barely anything - he had his vision halved on the same night, he _lost Dedue…_

_Thought_ he lost, he reminds himself. Dedue is alive. His people helped him. He is alive this time. But in that moment, Dedue's death was his reality, so why does he...

The words crawl up Dimitri's throat, cling to the roof of his mouth, press down on his tongue. He tries to swallow them, but they stay put. The only way is out, through his clenched teeth, his aching gums, his broken heart, his useless, defenseless body, frozen in fright. 

Dimitri swallows again. Forces his mouth to open. Bleeds.

"When I was imprisoned, she…" his voice rasps, but if Dimitri pauses to clear his throat, his mouth will close and he will never open it again. "It was - it was very brief, she barely touched me, but…"

No. He cannot. Goddess, he cannot.

Dimitri raises a hand to cinch it around his throat. Rolls the muscles of his neck in the grip, trying to coax the words out - or keep them in - anything, anything other than them choking up the roof of his mouth. If only he could get the shackles off, if only he could get away. If only he could stop his chest from turning to ice. 

When he gathers the courage to look up, Felix is thunderous. He digs a hand into the flowerbed, comes up with a fistful of leaves, tears into them with the other hand, shredding the helpless plant. A forceful waft of mint assaults Dimitri's nose, hooks a ring through his windpipe, drags him out.

They are in the garden. She is dead.

Felix throws the fistful of soggy mush away, digs his hand into the greenery again, pulls it up, clutching slithering coils of rosemary - shreds them too. Pale flowers of centauri and hellebore die under his punishing fingertips, blackened with soil. 

It should feel like a violation, like the patches of herbs harvested for poisons. It does not. 

Wave after wave of smells crashes over Dimitri, a ringing cacophony of small, soft, silent deaths clenched in shaking fists. He watches Felix on his wordless rampage, watches him as if from a different reality, a different life.

Felix is angry, again. A seething boy, grown into a wrathful man. Dimitri always finds ways to coax it to the surface of him, close the short gap to his skin.

But Felix himself lives deep in Dimitri's chest, unreachable by any rot or blood or plants' insistent, patient fingers. So maybe this is only fair, in the end.

Eventually, Felix slows down, a small hurricane calming after ripping its way through the flowerbeds. The thick mist of ruptured green veins hangs heavily in the air between them, tethering their lungs together.

Felix huffs, scowls, grips the stone with his juice-streaked fingers. "Her death was too quick," he grits out.

He looks like - like he wants to resurrect Cornelia just so that he could murder her anew.

A burden shifts on Dimitri's sore shoulders, and it _hurts,_ this brief strain of weightlessness. He feels lightheaded. Tired.

Violently tender. 

"Thank you," he murmurs. Watches Felix tense further, brisk, brittle, bare.

"Fuck," Felix says, which is as close as he can ever come to saying he is sorry. 

Dimitri does not know what for - and then, as suddenly as the first frost on the fields, he does.

"That night - were you there?" he asks. He remembers wondering just that, until everything fell into the crushing, mangling dark.

"I…" Felix pauses, jerks his head in an aborted motion. "I was mad at my old man - I don't even remember why." The muscle is jumping in his temple again; he will not look Dimitri in the eye. "By the time I saw him, it was too late. I never - never knew about his stupid plan until after."

Dimitri does not recognize the lines of what hides under this particular mask of anger - they do not match up to anything he knows. Not frustration, but… 

Oh. Felix is - ashamed.

How strange it is, to talk about it like this - years later, in the middle of a ruined garden that leans in to listen as they breathe and ache.

"Fuck," Felix says again.

A sound of someone crashing through the undergrowth, a lantern bobbing through the brambles. The two of them grow still, bone-tired and resigned. Watch the light approach.

A woman emerges, startled when she nearly stumbles into the resurrected crown prince. Dimitri wonders what she thinks about finding him like this, half-blind, half-feral. Half-dead.

"Your Highness!" she exclaims in surprise; the lantern sways as she lifts it higher. "Duke Fraldarius was looking for you, shall I tell him of your whereabouts?"

Dimitri notices the moment the light reflects in Felix's eyes and the woman realizes that he is there, too. By now, he barely sees his own white shirt in the womb of the branches braided over their heads.

Felix's face is shuttered off, a blank mask, an uncarved shield.

"No need," Dimitri sighs, coordinates his body into getting up as his joints protest. "I will come to him."

The garden walls close behind them when they leave, hiding the evidence of private agony and ruin from prying eyes.

*

The feast is an odd event, a sharp awareness of life clinging ferociously to existence among destruction and death. Laughter borders on hysterical, people hold onto each other's gazes insistently, jealously, as if looking away will destroy the illusion and they will find themselves treading the air towards the heavens. Touching and jostling each other in a constant reminder that they are alive, safe, here.

And what a miracle that is - Dimitri can scarcely look at them without becoming dizzied by the ghosts: touching, jostling, laughing too, after having survived in a reality that did not come to be. The coin has been flipped, and fell, and time has woven its pattern, but here, surrounded by the reminders of what could have been, Dimitri cannot shake the precarious feeling of watching the coin still spin in the air as it falls.

Dimitri is asked to say a speech. He cannot think of anything to say that would not flay him alive, but he gets up anyway. His generals - his friends - fall silent in their places at his table, watch him rise. Miraculously, miraculously all alive, no matter what the shadows whisper in his ear.

Dimitri watches the soldiers crammed into the hall, as many as the room would fit - there are more outside, he knows, and Fhirdian civilians too, with bonfires igniting the warm night, illuminating the hastily constructed benches, the tables carried out of every home. Watches their faces soaked in exhaustion and elation and grief, memories of the day settling into new lines on their skin.

"I thank you all - dearly - for our victory," Dimitri begins. His voice is steady - he makes sure of it. "I never could have done this without your support - without your faith."

Looking anyone in the eye is suddenly impossible; Dimitri drags his gaze just over the tops of their heads instead, notices people nod at his words below the waterline. "Tonight marks a new page in the history of Faerghus. The reign of evil over our land is over - and I swear to you that I will devote all that I am to ensuring that it is never threatened again."

He glances fleetingly down at his friends: Felix looks contemplative, staring off into the distance; Dedue gives him a firm nod, Sylvain - a double thumbs up. Dimitri does not have time to look at anyone else.

They all, too, came so close to dying today, trampled by the giants or stabbed through the chest or shot out of the sky. Their insides bleed sluggishly onto the table.

A tune sounds in Dimitri's head, a thin whistle of the wind calling him south, a merciless ticking beyond the firmament that will not be bargained with. He swallows.

"I would like to - honour those who have fallen today," he continues his speech; a chill runs up his spine, cradles the back of his head. The faces of the soldiers turn solemn. "I will not praise their death - they do not deserve to be reduced to a tale of duty." Beside him, Dimitri sees Felix's eyes snap sharply to his. "But we can honour their memory by carrying on - by remembering them with gratitude. By staying alive in order to do so."

A ripple passes through the people as they shift in anticipation. Dimitri looks at his friends in alarm.

"I - do not have a knife," he tells them quietly, suddenly awkward. He never had a need for one until now.

Before anyone else can react, Felix pulls one of his knives out of its sheath - a sleek, wicked thing - and offers it to Dimitri, holding it by the blade. Retrieves another one for himself, as do all the Lions, as do the Faerghan soldiers in the hall. Claude's people watch them in bewilderment but say nothing, cautiously entranced.

Dimitri grips the knife in his left hand, studies the upturned palm of the right. He cannot take the gauntlets off, of course - oh well. He can always repair the glove, in theory.

Although he has forgotten how to be careful with himself, the cut he places is still careful in its deliberation - it seems that, sometimes, the body remembers. Blood pools, gentle and throbbing and thick, through the sliced leather.

Dimitri raises the cupped palm in a salute, looks about at the gathered people, from one grim face to another and another. A hush falls over the hall as he brings his hand to his lips; clothes rustle softly as everyone else does the same.

Still alive. Still alive.

The cuts will be allowed to heal on their own, without the use of magic or salves: some wounds must throb their fill. Some hurts must run their course - such is the ancient wisdom of grief.

Dimitri suppresses a grim smile at how deeply he has forgotten this.

People fashion bandages from handkerchiefs and torn off stripes of clothes, not willing to wait for the lengths of bleached linen handed out by the healers. Then, the feast begins.

It is a modest affair, of course, in a war-starved country, in a city having barely clambered out of its grave. But the simple food is filling, and the wine, though watered down and bitter, is plentiful, and someone has already caught sight of a few barrels of strong ale waiting to be rolled into the hall. After the brief recession, the spirits go up again. A small group of musicians at the end of the hall resumes their performance.

Felix gave Dimitri a strange look when he returned him his carefully wiped knife, but did not say anything. Now he seems happy enough to gripe at Sylvain across the table and endure Annette's playful prodding on his other side, so he must be alright.

As hunger gives way to lazy contentment and people begin to slow down in their eating, Sylvain excuses himself from his spot next to Ingrid. Dimitri does not notice at first, but when he turns his head and his void shifts, he discovers that Mercedes's place is empty, too. As well as...

"My lords and ladies! Dear friends. A moment of your attention, please!" Ferdinand's voice rings out, carrying effortlessly across the hall. A quick glance explains why: he is standing by the musicians, the tall arch above them bringing the waves of sound towards the tables. 

A flutist and a lutist lend their instruments to Mercedes and Sylvain. Sylvain turns to wink at the audience, while Mercedes passes a hand over her borrowed flute, cleansing it.

"My name is Ferdinand von Aegir," Ferdinand continues with a short bow. "I know that you are all eager to dive into the drinking and dancing part of the celebration - believe me, so am I," he says to scattered benevolent snickers from the crowd. "But before the festivities can continue, my friends here - the radiant Mercedes von Martritz and the...Sylvain Gautier - and yours truly," laughter in the crowd grows stronger, someone wolf-whistles, Sylvain points them out with a grin and a wave, "would like to perform something for you. With His Highness's permission, naturally."

"What on earth…" Felix mumbles.

Dimitri instantly finds all eyes on him. They must think this planned - but he had no idea. His head hurts too much to pay attention to anything.

He coaxes his muscles out of the involuntary tension. These are his people. He need not search for blades behind every word. That is not him.

"Of course," Dimitri responds, remembers to raise his voice. "It would be delightful to hear your performance."

"Much obliged." Ferdinand bows and addresses his audience again. "Now, I was told that this is an old Faerghan ballad and might be familiar to many, so I must beg your forgiveness in advance if I should - take some artistic liberties."

His smile grows somewhat strained, and with a startle Dimitri remembers that Ferdinand is an Adrestian. But it seems that being a traitor to the Empire and one of the prodigal crown prince's generals has raised his status in the eyes of the Faerghans. Not to mention the wine and the food putting them in a magnanimous mood - Ferdinand has timed this well.

He has lost so much, has he not? Dimitri never asked, in the end. How have these five years treated him?

Dimitri glances at his friends at the table, from one face to the next. How have these years treated everyone? He _was_ filled in on general events, of course, on the hulking skeletons, but...

Dimitri turns his attention back outwards. While Ferdinand was talking, Mercedes and Sylvain stood with their heads tilted together, each coaxing sighs of sounds from their respective instruments. Now, they nod when Ferdinand casts a look over his shoulder and take places to his right, with Sylvain in the middle.

Sylvain begins, plucking at the strings, weaving a crisp, lyrical tune, thin needles of the first frost in the wilderness. It plucks at Dimitri's heart just as surely in recognition.

Ferdinand exhales. Inhales. Begins to sing, the voice of Mercedes' flute a gentle backdrop.

_"I will abandon my home and my plight,_

_Will trade half my realm for a spirited steed,_

_And I will be faithful to you, my beloved,_

_If only you do not forget about me._

_And I will be faithful to you, my beloved,_

_If only you do not forget about me."_

The way the melody rises on the third line, climbs further up still on the repetition - Dimitri remembers this song. Ferdinand's Adrestian accent is melting some words together, turning some consonants soft when they should be hard - but he knows it. He knows it. 

_'The Wanderer King',_ an old ballad indeed. About a nomad who grew so ill with longing for faraway lands and for solitude that he abandoned his kingdom in favour of the roads he was so enamoured with. A free spirit, yearning for sights he has not seen, dreaming of skies he has not fallen asleep under.

Is that - does Ferdinand intend this to be about him?

Dimitri's stomach turns with quiet dread. He remembers how this song goes. The heavy waters of Ilykar pull him with them.

_"A wanderer's life's a familiar lot:_

_A spring in the mountains, a bread slice of moon._

_And I might be destined to die on the road,_

_Only my heart would never blame you._

_And I might be destined to die on the road,_

_Only my heart would never blame you."_

In his anxious contemplation, Dimitri realizes he has missed a verse - this is the third one already. Mercedes and Sylvain have grown bolder by now, their voices gaining power and surety as they settle into the tune, accommodate Ferdinand's interpretation of it, his effortless change to a higher key. People are clapping to the rhythm. 

Ferdinand finishes the line on a clear vibrato and dives off the cliff of it into the next one, the music buoying his voice. The melody is not a gentle whisper in the lonely dark anymore - now, it speaks of resignation and defiance in the face of it.

_"My verses will ring before every hearth_

_In dim little taverns at the edge of the world._

_And once spring awakens the slumbering earth,_

_My brethren - wild geese - will solemnly mourn._

_And once spring awakens the slumbering earth,_

_My brethren - wild geese - will solemnly mourn."_

The song has a bitter end, Dimitri is reminded suddenly. In the last verse, the king's unnamed lover forgets him - and one does not get dubbed 'the Wanderer' for ever coming back.

A fitting song. A fitting end for someone who has abandoned his people for five long years to chase his ghosts. Condemnation and obscurity. 

Sometimes, it is impossible to come back - even when it might seem otherwise. 

As if he senses Dimitri's thoughts, Ferdinand's eyes snap to Dimitri's own, and he inclines his head briefly, lips quirked up in a mischievous smile.

_"I traded my realm for a spirited steed…"_ he sings and trails off, and Sylvains fingers dance over the strings, rainwater lapping at a horse's hooves.

_"I breathed in the wind that was foreign and tart…"_

Mercedes' turn for a short, sweet solo, a wind's whistle. Two lines left. Dimitri is ready for the blow. He is.

_"But…"_ Ferdinand draws in the short silence of Mercedes pulling air into her lungs, Sylvain's hand stilling the strings before he hits them again.

_"...I will come back, I do promise you this,_

_If only you keep me safe in your heart._

_But I will come back, I do promise you this,_

_If only you keep me safe in your heart!"_

The hall explodes in applause, people cheering as the performers grin and bow - nobody seems to mind that Ferdinand rewrote the last lines. If anything, they sound like they...welcome it.

Something bitter and sweet and bitter again closes Dimitri's throat, coils and curls around his heart. Blood is spilling over the marble floor, coating the blue enamel of a dagger's handle. 

Goddess, he wants to _live._

The thought startles Dimitri. He has not - felt like _that_ \- for the longest time. Such viscera, such mulish desperation has only ever been turned gravewards. What a great irony it is, then, that his hour is drawing near.

He sighs, feeling the brush of warm, damp air down the back of his throat, the walls of his lungs. Exhales it again, warmed and dampened further by the cocoon of his body. For the first time in too many years, being alive tastes sweet - sweeter still against the fleeting fragility of it. He cradles the feeling, presses it into his heart until it leaves an imprint. To the very end, he will remember this.

He should say something, he realizes.

"Thank you," Dimitri grips his goblet tightly, raises it to toast the performers. "That was lovely - I am touched."

People around him echo the sentiment, call them over to pour them appreciative drinks. And if something knowing passes over the faces of Dimitri's friends, he decides not to notice.

As Sylvain slides back into his spot, Ingrid lands a loud kiss on his cheek, leaving him absolutely gobsmacked to everyone's roaring amusement. Dimitri hides his own smile behind his hand, but his mirth pales quickly as he returns to the rising rumble of visions in his mind.

Claude is going to be in trouble. Almost certainly, he already is.

He is forced back, giving up street after street after street, and the water behind him is choked with smoke. Seabird-thin ribcages of ships turn, fighting the press of the waves, but the fire is faster.

This is not the reality, not yet. But it will be, soon enough, and Dimitri finds himself straining at the leash, waiting, waiting.

The barrels are finally rolled out as the night passes its midpoint, the tables are moved, and the dancing begins. Dimitri notes it distantly from beyond the veneer or streets running with blood, just tipsy enough not to be able to ignore the ghosts in favour of reality.

Derdriu is a city of secrets, a city of silent, subtle warfare, fought with words and poisons and daggers. Not suited for active, open combat. Not prepared for it.

Someone pushes, someone trips, and with a punched out _‘oof’_ Felix lands sideways in Dimitri's lap and lets out an angry yelp as ale splashes over his turtleneck.

_“Flames_ \- Sylvain, I swear to fuck - _oh,”_ he looks to his left and suddenly realizes where he is.

Dimitri raises his hands halfway, uncertain, torn between wanting to make sure that Felix does not topple backwards and the odd impression that he has been handed a very tipsy and very feral cat. Can cats get tipsy?

And where would he even put his hands? Felix’s bare arms emanate heat, and he is flushed down to his shoulders, the lightning scars coming out of the blush in coils like low tide water escaping sand, the spell tattoos snaking around his wrists. Even Dimitri would feel the brand of that warmth with his numb fingers, the hum it would wake in his bones. The rest of Felix - his waist, his hips, his knees to put a hand on - are unmapped, dangerous waters, ones Dimitri does not dare even look at, let alone touch. 

Felix does not hurry to grab onto anything either, seemingly content to use Dimitri as an unexpected chair. He narrows his eyes in disapproval, reaches over with his free hand and taps Dimitri on the cheek with his fingers. Does it again, forcefully, almost bordering on a slap, lets his hand slide down like the pull of a lash. Dimitri’s skin burns under his touch. 

“Chin up,” Felix orders, and his eyes are the colour of red gold. “We’re home.”

Dimitri tilts his head up towards him, unthinkingly. Felix’s lips part around an exhale, his gaze flickers down from Dimitri’s eye and back up.

"You're still sulking," he notes. 

"I am worried about Claude," Dimitri confesses, hoping that Felix will not hear him over all the noise.

Felix, of course, does. "Claude can handle himself," he says dismissively. "I've seen it happen enough times. Besides, Byleth's with him. They're basically an army on their own." 

Another pang of phantom jealousy for a person he barely knows. 

Dimitri shakes his head but says nothing - it is pointless to argue. They are supposed to meet back in Daphnel, but Dimitri finds his inner gaze turned south-east, waiting for a messenger bird. 

And the bird does arrive the very next morning, a ring-necked dove, carrying a note scribbled in a hurried cipher: Arundel has besieged Derdriu.

Dimitri hates being right.

“What will you have us do?” Rodrigue asks.

They are gathered in the council hall, many still hazy and fragile from the night of celebrating, but there is no time.

There is never any bloody time.

Dimitri thinks hard. Even if they march tomorrow, it can take them a week to reach Derdriu, and that is if they go through Ailell. Less if they only take the cavalry, but still too much, too much.

He clenches the note in his hand, the hasty scrawl nigh-illegible.

“Ingrid. Hilda.”

“Your Highness,” Ingrid responds immediately.

Hilda raises her eyebrows; her expression is tense, a coiled spring.

“Relieve one third of your people of cargo. They will double up with mages and healers, fighters if there is space left. Marianne - direct the restoration efforts towards the mounts today, make sure we can be in the air tomorrow at dawn. The wounded will march back south with the bulk of the army; _we_ are flying out to Derdriu.”

“What about Fhirdiad?” Rodrigue points out. “We can’t leave an empty throne.”

Dimitri considers it quickly, watches the hastily hung banners around him melt from blue to teal in the dance of dust particles. The answer is simple. “Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius, I hereby appoint you Steward of Fhirdiad and all of Faerghus to rule in my stead until I return. Should - should I die,” he swallows and thinks of marble floors and blades and silenced bloodlines, “Faerghus is yours to watch over.”

It is a big thing to say, heavy like the weight of a scepter and thousands and thousands of souls that follow its motion - and Dimitri does not know the proper script, though of course it exists, dictated by the Kyphon Law, but what he does know, in his blood, in his bones, that if the Blaiddyd line were to end, only a Fraldarius would carry the throne.

If the Blaiddyd line…well. 

It will make Felix the crown prince, Dimitri realizes. Oh, how he will hate the idea of it. But eventually, he will grow into it.

Rodrigue nods, pulls his shoulders back as he accepts the weight. “Your Highness.”

Rodrigue treats his role seriously, instantly taking over the immediate ruling. There are magpies to be sent: with salutations to the loyalists, with strong suggestions to reconsider their fealty to imperial supporters; Fhirdian resistance leaders to be summoned to the palace to share information; accounting to be recovered from the shambles. Dimitri does not keep a close eye, busy with his own preparations, but he overhears what is happening throughout the day, and the merciless countdown of his heart is somewhat soothed.

Dimitri walks through the palace, alone, his footsteps muffled by the worn, dirtied carpets. The ceilings are dusted with cobwebs, the empty oil lamps are dull with soot: Cornelia took pleasure in meticulous, deliberate neglect.

Dimitri steps through the shadows, growls at the silhouettes of imperials walking into rooms they have no business disturbing, claiming things they have no right to claim. Memories of them are pale, trapped in the fabric of the palace, in the warped weave of the air. 

The visions from the times when Dimitri - when Dimitri fails to retake Fhirdiad - are sharper. Crisper. More present. He strides through them resolutely, refusing to be cowed but refusing to linger, too. Father keeps up a running commentary, his words dripping with derision. Dimitri just lets him, but stays silent himself.

His earlier, happier days are caught in the amber of time here, too. The few memories Dimitri still retains, fuzzy and fragile, growing fainter every time he runs his fingers over them.

He sees Rodrigue’s work. Sees the slow restoration, the gentle swell of the palace back into dignity. Does not dare look further, swallows the stab of headache that comes with it. 

Dimitri treads wood and stone and carpet, composes a long love letter to his childhood home with every step along its well-worn, well-known corridors. Tries to commit as much as he can to his memory, even though he knows it will not last. Well - maybe it will last long enough.

He was happy here, once. Long, long ago. In a different life. As a different person.

Dimitri touches the wall, watches his hand come away dusty. Breathes in the cool morning air and holds it, feeling the press against his ribs.

His heart grows swollen and heavy, pushes into his throat, shedding ashes. Reality splinters into facets, and he cuts himself on each one of them.

This sadness will never end.

Dimitri allows himself one hour of grief. Then, he gets to work.

One of the studies is hastily decluttered and cleaned, and Dimitri makes camp there, poring over the maps and the notes from his generals. Ingrid delivers the numbers of her surviving soldiers and mounts that can now be spared for someone else; Ferdinand brings an account of Hilda's wyverns. 

Dimitri matches the numbers up against the rest of the army, pulls up their previous calculations on the amount of cargo they need to bring now that they have no beasts of burden to rely on, compares them to the flying mounts' lifting power and its relation to speed. Pegasi cannot carry a lot, but need fewer breaks, good at keeping up a consistent speed; wyverns easily take on a heavier load but become sluggish and moody when forced to fly for too long, especially if the sunlight is sparse.

The calculations themselves are not difficult, but the factors are numerous, and Dimitri does not want to make a mistake.

Ashe visits Dimitri in the early afternoon as he is staring at the city map of Derdriu, considering the best angle of approach.

Ashe wrings his hands and shuffles his feet and eventually blurts out how he really does not want it to seem like he is running away from a fight or does not believe in Dimitri’s cause, but that he would very much like to know if it were at all possible for him to stay behind in Fhirdiad and help out where he can. And that he is also terrified of heights and would likely topple off a pegasus or a wyvern if he were not tied to it with ropes. 

That does not happen - almost ever, though some of the times Ashe does come close to slipping off his mount. And if he goes to Derdriu and then - south - he is also very likely to survive: the most dangerous times for Ashe have passed. But Dimitri considers him, and takes in the visions, and witnesses, in a flash of light, how much _good_ Ashe can do here. Witnesses the scores Ashe has yet to settle in the west.

Faerghus is watching Dimitri, cold and strict and severe. The tundra watches him, the wetlands watch him, the cranberry fields and the fjords and the rapids watch him. Dimitri cannot stop offering it people, as if it would ever be appeased. As if it would ever forgive him for leaving - again and again and again.

Ashe visibly sags in relief when Dimitri acquiesces and runs off to find Rodrigue as if afraid that he will change his mind.

That gives Dimitri another idea. He knows that Mercedes and Annette would like to stay too, but healers and mages are the people he cannot afford to leave behind, not now. Instead, he calls for Dedue, who is, of course, standing guard right outside the heavy doors.

He comes in, and Dimitri peers closer, squints his eye to sharpen the contrasts of the visions growing out of Dedue’s back like thorny thickets and adding more scars to his skin - to make sure he is right.

“There is something I need to ask of you,” he begins and knows immediately that Dedue knows, sees it in the subtle shift as he stands straighter, moves the cane slightly behind his back. 

He was not wounded the day before, despite what the visions might be telling Dimitri, but so much exertion has taken its toll.

“Your Highness - Dimitri…”

“I would like it very much if you stayed here. There is - so much work that needs to be done, and I would feel a lot better if I knew I was leaving Fhirdiad in capable hands,” Dimitri hears how it sounds and hurries to correct himself. “Rodrigue’s hands are capable, of course, but this is too much for just one man. He is going to need help.”

_‘He is going to need help when I am gone.’_

_'I would rather you did not have to watch me die.'_

Dedue’s mouth twitches briefly, and Dimitri’s heart whines: he is upset. “If I have somehow disappointed you,” Dedue says, and his voice is smooth and even and taut like a strained muscle. “If you have any doubt regarding my ability to fight…”

“No - _no,_ that is not it, Dedue, I promise,” Dimitri rushes to reassure him. “Please - I hope you know that _I_ know how capable you are and how deeply indebted to you I am,” he talks right over Dedue’s noise of protest, “but I really, truly need you here. I _need_ to know that Faerghus is alright, I need to focus on what is ahead if I want to win this future for Fódlan.” He pauses here and knows, _knows_ that this is a low blow, but he goes for it anyway. “And I need you to - I need you to be there for Duscur, too.”

_‘Please believe me,’_ is what he does not say. _‘Please believe_ **_in_ ** _me.’_ Because if _Dedue_ does not - if Dedue cannot…

But Dedue considers him, and closes his eyes, and bows. “Very well.”

*

Night comes and goes, and as the sun prepares to begin its ascension over the heavenly arch, so do they.

The palace grounds are spacious enough to fit all the fliers, and those who are staying behind spill out of the building and stand on the steps. Dimitri lets his gaze sweep slowly over their faces, lifts his head to glance at his home, almost forgotten, briefly revisited - just for one last time.

Everything that has not been sung to the end leaves marks deep in his chest as it pulls away. Perhaps they will sing it instead.

_'Goodbye,'_ Dimitri thinks fiercely, looking at Rodrigue, at Dedue, at Ashe, at everyone who chose and chose to believe in him despite his every fault. _'Goodbye. I do not ask for forgiveness.'_

Apart from Ashe and Dedue, Ignatz and Raphael volunteered to stay in Fhirdiad: to help restitch the torn trade veins and to keep the tentative, turbulent peace. The fliers will bring Mercedes, Annette, Marianne, and Lysithea - and a handful of their people - to Derdriu, with Dimitri leading and Felix snapping at Rodrigue’s suggestion to take a company of swordsmen with him. The rest - the cavalry, the heavy axe-swingers - are going back to Garreg Mach, to regroup before the march south.

Sylvain appears by Dimitri's side.

"The lady of the hour reports that everyone's ready for takeoff," he smiles in greeting.

Dimitri looks behind him but cannot spot Ingrid - there are too many pegasi between them, too many people swinging themselves up into saddles.

The trampled, overgrown grass breathes stiffly under his feet.

"Thank you."

Sylvain puts his hands behind his head, stretches. He is not wearing his armour. "Don't go having too much fun without us, you hear me?"

They are not going there for fun - obviously - but a silent worry lurks in the lines of Sylvain's face when Dimitri looks at him.

"We would not dream of it," he replies with a smile. "It would be most unfair otherwise, sending you off like this."

"That's the spirit," Sylvain grins, and gives him a lazy salute, and walks off in the direction he came from.

Dimitri cautiously pets his borrowed pegasus, tugs the belts holding Areadbhar in place, gives the cinches a cursory glance: someone has already checked the tack earlier, and Dimitri would not trust himself not to strangle the stallion anyway. The beast turns its head to watch his ministrations but does not react, both sturdy and phlegmatic enough to bear both his weight and his company.

Another pegasus is led to stand to his left, and Felix ducks out from around it.

“Ready?” he asks and frowns doubtfully. “Do you even know how to fly?”

Dimitri brushes his armoured fingertips over the neck pinions - careful, so careful - gives Felix a sheepish grin. “I can ride well enough. How much harder can this be?”

Felix rubs his face, letting out a groan. “Great, so your latest grand idea is to go out with a _splat,_ now? This country is doomed.”

There is no real spite in Felix’s voice - he must be too sleepy, still - and Dimitri opens his mouth to give a harmless retort when Felix half-turns and Dimitri sees it, strapped to his back, its sleek lines like dragon hide…

“Is that Aegis?” he asks, dumbly, because of course it is. What else could it be? But why would Felix carry it - why now?

Felix turns away fully, busies himself with his pegasus’s tack, subsequently almost shoving the shield in Dimitri's face. “What of it.”

“You…” Dimitri pauses, perplexed. “I did not know you had it with you.”

“I didn’t. My old man brought it from home to Garreg Mach.”

Dimitri feels a faint warmth rise to his cheeks, a heady mix of fondness and possessiveness and embarrassment. 

A memory vibrates under his skin; he reaches for it. He is five, and Father is finally back from the war. He gifts Dimitri a Srengi hunting bow to play with, but Dimitri almost forgets to look at it, transfixed by the shield that Uncle Rodrigue hands off to a servant when he comes into their private quarters. It looks like it is made of bone, like Father’s lance, like _A-read-bhar,_ and Dimitri would really like to run his fingers over it, feel the grooves and ask them what secrets they carry. 

Uncle Rodrigue is called ‘Shield of Faerghus’ now, which is funny, because how could one person be a shield for the whole kingdom? That sounds like it would be really hard, but Uncle Rodrigue is smiling, so it must be something he wants.

And now that Fhirdiad is theirs again, now that it surely must seem to everyone that Dimitri is to become king - is Felix settling into his role too, the one he has always hated so vehemently?

“Felix - _Felix,”_ Dimitri repeats, when he does not react - is he unbuckling and rebuckling the same bridle strap? “You - you must know, surely, that you do not have to walk that path. You are free to do - whatever you should like.”

His heart breaks at the thought of Felix leaving. He can see it clearly, all the times when Felix becomes a mercenary and a soldier and a hunter and a mage, a blade for hire, a blade in the dark. Most of those times, he gets to live for many years after Dimitri’s tired soul gives out, with or without him completing his mission. Felix is free, then. Unbound. Dimitri’s death releases him from the shackles of their bloodlines. 

And even if - even in the times when Dimitri fails, when Faerghus falls - Felix has a chance, still. Can still build a life for himself.

Dimitri grunts, wrenches himself away from the visions, drenched in shameful, selfish sorrow. Felix is looking at him.

“I will not blame you,” Dimitri says, and the words taste like ash in his numb mouth. “Like you said, this is not about duty.”

That is not exactly what he had said - what he had snarled in Dimitri’s face, hurting and scrubbed raw and exposed to the bone, deeper than to the bone. But the sentiment is the same.

Felix holds his gaze, steady where Dimitri is drowning.

“I know,” he replies. A twitch of a smile, and he turns back to his steed again.

Dimitri sifts his hands through the clouded water, trying to see if he could graze that memory again with his fingertips. What did Rodrigue tell him when Dimitri asked him about his moniker?

What was it?

He does not remember. The words are gone. But Rodrigue - he smiled, and looked so achingly proud. His secret, carried in an open heart for everyone to know.

Dimitri holds the image of Rodrigue’s face carefully in his mind’s eye so as not to smudge it with incautious fingers. Thinks back to Felix at the wall of Fhirdiad, looking, really _looking_ at Dimitri, elated and breathless, like he was seeing him for the first time. Like he found something he had lost.

Oh. _Oh._

Dimitri becomes aware that a giddy, useless smile is splitting his face in two only when Felix throws a glance at him and immediately grows scarlet and cross.

“Boar,” he says sternly, his glare a warning. _“Cease.”_

But Dimitri does not - cannot - stop grinning right until they mount and take off and his stomach swoops as it turns out that flying really is not like riding at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spoilers about the CWs:  
> \- physical control: Cornelia manipulates the gauntlets, intending to force Dimitri to attack Felix  
> \- character death: Cornelia gets violently killed by Felix :)  
> \- discussion of sexual assault: Dimitri and Felix make a valiant attempt at talking about timeskip Cornelia. oh my god do they try  
> \- ritualistic self-harm: Faerghans pour one out for the boys only instead of pouring it out they drink it and instead of alcohol it's blood from their sliced palms
> 
> you may have recognized Elaine from my other fic, "offer it shelter (offer it songs)". that's because C/T was written WAY before ois(ois) and I basically copypasted her character from here to there. it's how i see Dimitri's mother, don't @ me
> 
> you win internet points if you spotted the blink-and-you-miss-it Terry Pratchett reference and the van Gogh quote. the ballad that Ferdinand sings is not mine, but the very loose translation of it is. and yes, the original version does end poorly. very on-brand for Faerghus, imo.
> 
> if a vision about a certain character made you go "huh", you might've come across the easter egg from the early version of the Fhirdiad map in the game. is it a good easter egg? probably not. but i was so flabbergasted when i first learned it that i had to put it in. we're here now. out there is a reality where this came to pass, and isn't that the strangest thing?
> 
> ALSO! chapters-wise, the end of this one actually marks the middlepoint of the fic! so... how are you guys feeling? :) how's the mood in the chat?


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Is that why you…" Dimitri gestures uncertainly at Felix's unevenly chopped off hair, hoping that he will understand.
> 
> The whetstone screeches along the blade, harder than it needs to.
> 
> "Yeah. Custom." Felix's voice is clipped to blankness.
> 
> "I did not know you cared for customs."
> 
> Felix bares his teeth at something in the woods.
> 
> "I don't."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a tame chapter, CWs-wise :) canon-typical violence, including visions.

_so give me air - and I will become your wings,_

_I will give you a storm, and possibly even a tempest_

They fly for two days with only a few brief breaks, stopping properly for the night in between so that the mounts can rest and the humans can stretch their sore limbs. At the end of the second day, they land in the thick forests that cover the cliffs of the Eye Socket, just east of where the Ailell river injects its sulphuric stream into the salty water.

The air smells of sulphur, too, carried from inland, and the pegasi are twitchy, easily spooked, but this will have to do. They cannot get any closer to Derdriu without the risk of revealing themselves, and they need time to scout ahead and restore their strength before meeting whatever awaits in the city.

Summer darkness falls suddenly, like the lid of a casket slamming shut, trapping them in the thick salty lair of it, and fires dot the spaces between the trees, away from the cliffs. Some of the soldiers take their wyverns to hunt game for dinner; after they come back, the beasts are released to search for their own food. The pegasi graze on the sparse acerbic grass, tethered to tree trunks.

Dimitri's blood is itchy, unsettled where it pushes against the inside of his skin, where it pulses through his feverish brain. He finds himself a seat on one of the fallen trees, away from the low burning fires and the snorting mounts and the morphing visions of people, in the relative privacy of thorny bushes. Places Areadbhar across his lap with the blade pointing left, pulls out a vial of mineral oil and a cloth. Rodrigue gave him the vial back in Garreg Mach, and by now caring for the lance feels more natural than caring for himself ever did.

Felix melts out of the darkness like a creature born of it.

"You'll waste your remaining eye on this," he says.

Dimitri considers his words, shrugs them away. He only needs to see as far as the reach of Areadbhar. 

Felix lets out a huff, looks back towards the fires, then steps over the tree trunk and sits down, facing in the other direction, with just enough space between them to avoid accidental stabbings.

Dimitri hears a hiss as Felix unsheathes one of his swords, glances over to see him lean the end between the gnarled roots of another felled tree in front of him, leaving it steady.

Felix pulls out a whetstone, Dimitri uncorks the vial. They get to work, and Dimitri quickly loses himself in the rhythmic whispering sound of the whetstone against steel, answering calls to the short screeches and grunts of the wyverns hunting in the forest.

Areadbhar pulses brighter, fuller after Dimitri passes the cloth over the blade, working the oil into every digit. The hair thin cracks swell shut. 

Some things are so easy to mend.

"Nervous?" Felix breaks the silence. The whetstone pauses its journey, and Felix lifts it to his eyes, squinting at the porous surface, then leans to bring it closer to Areadbhar to inspect it in the orange light.

Dimitri immediately looks east, though of course he can see nothing from this far away. The scouts have yet to return. 

"I hope we are not too late," he says.

It is not just Claude, not just Byleth. The presence of Arundel, the impending confrontation with him - oh, they _will_ fight, Dimitri knows that - feels like a stepping stone to Edelgard, but also so, so much more. Something terrible billows over the earth - bigger than the rumbles of improbable earthquakes and fires - and the dead rise into it from the cold darkness.

Felix hums and resumes his work, switching the whetstone out for a finer one. Dimitri cannot help watching him out of the corner of his eye - Felix sat down on his seeing side - and something in him sighs as the warm light of the lance softens the angles of Felix's profile.

"You are not as…" Dimitri catches himself as the words slip out, but it is already too late - and his mind goes blank as Felix pins him down with a sharp stare and looks away just as quickly.

"As what?" Felix asks, peering down at his sword, then leans it against the trunk and pulls out the other.

Dimitri cannot find the words. Nothing fits, everything is suddenly too alien.

What does he say? Not as prone to tearing into Dimitri for every mistake he makes, every fault he carries? Not as quick to punish him?

No, that is not it. Felix _was_ quick to express his judgement: when he sat with Dimitri after Cornelia, when he confronted him outside of Garreg Mach, when he tried to stop him at Gronder - even when he said that he expected him to be unhinged…

But - Felix talks to him.

Dimitri swallows a huff of bitter laughter. The bar is so low: Felix _talks_ to him...

No, wrong again. Felix talks to him, and heals hurts he has no obligation to heal, and - and carries Aegis…

Dimitri stops short. Ah, of course. No matter how much Felix may denounce his inherited duty, it still rears its head in him - the call of blood cannot be ignored so easily.

But…

Dimitri glances at Felix again as he squints at his sword, having no reason whatsoever to sit and sharpen it here.

Felix catches him looking and rolls his eyes.

"We’ve changed," he frowns down at the blade and shrugs, as if it does not matter at all. "I grew up. Gained some perspective."

Ah, but of course - again. The Felix Dimitri carries in his unraveling memory could not care enough to come to Magic classes, considered every little thing that did not fit him a personal affront and attacked it with according levels of ferocity and efficiency. 

_This_ Felix is centered, grounded enough to use healing magic without the help of sigil binds or tattoos. That takes concentration - and patience. 

Still angry, still fiery and unapologetic. But - older. Wiser.

Something else flutters up at Dimitri, a wobbly memory, a sickly child of fever and pain.

_'They said you were executed.'_

"Is that why you…" Dimitri gestures uncertainly at Felix's unevenly chopped off hair, hoping that he will understand.

The whetstone screeches along the blade, harder than it needs to.

"Yeah. Custom." Felix's voice is clipped to blankness.

"I did not know you cared for customs."

Felix bares his teeth at something in the woods.

"I don't."

Dimitri - would really like to kiss him. To just lean over, close the terrible gap between them, drink in the moment Felix turns his head and realizes what is about to happen. Would the yield of his lips be warm? Would his stubble feel prickly against his skin? What a simple gesture it would be, what an easy one.

The hardest thing in the world.

Cold, black marble floors are calling for his blood. A royal stone's thirst can only be quenched with something just as ancient. The hour is drawing near, so why should it matter if Dimitri kisses him? If he, for once in his life, reaches for something he selfishly wants? Something that lies curled in his chest, waiting and growing cold and stiff? Will he just carry it into his grave together with everything else that he is and everything that he has been made into? Or will he…

There is enough distance between them that Dimitri cannot possibly feel Felix's body heat, but his every nerve still simmers with warmth. He turns his head slightly, studying Felix as he is finishing up sharpening his second sword.

The answer comes easily, and Dimitri bows his head under its weight, his gaze drawn back to the light-filled crevices of Areadbhar.

The hour is drawing near - and this is precisely why it matters.

Because if this is a stranger, kinder reality where Felix might - feel something for him - the only reality where Dimitri could possibly dare kiss him in the first place, guided by a feeling in him that refuses to grow tame - then how would he even be able to do something like that without making promises he knows he would not keep? Felix has been left behind already. 

Felix takes out a clean cloth to wipe down his swords; Dimitri pulls out a waxed one and sets to buffing every digit, vaguely, inconsolably upset.

Areadbhar is grinning between them. 

Dimitri looks at it morosely without bothering to make his eye focus, observes, his gaze turned inwards, how the thick feeling fades back into resigned numbness.

"Do you still hear Glenn?" Felix asks suddenly.

Dimitri jerks his head towards him, but he is staring stubbornly at the sword in his lap. Felix scoffs.

"I know you talked to him when we were at the academy," he says. "I heard through the wall, all the time."

Dimitri looks away, shame burning his face. "I am sorry."

"You know he's not real, right?" Felix continues as if he has not heard him. "Whatever you think you-- Glenn's dead. I fired the arrow at his raft. Not that - not that there was much to burn."

Dimitri knows it, rolls the grief-stone of it in his palm. Glenn _is_ dead - except for all the times he is not.

"What _are_ you fighting for?" Felix is gripping the blade so hard Dimitri is afraid that he will cut into his palm right through the cloth. "Who are you hoping to appease?"

Dimitri knows all the wrong answers to this. Knows all the truthful ones.

He sighs. "You do not understand…"

"You're right," Felix snaps. "I don't."

Dimitri almost laughs at the absurdity of it all being about family again: the ghost of Felix's brother between them, over Dimitri's shoulder; other ghosts, calling on his debt as the survivor, and now this, his last remaining family members…

At least, Edelgard will not become his ghost. Another upside to the silence that will come after he fulfills his duty.

Dimitri reaches back, inspects all the paths that have converged into this one. There could have been better outcomes. Whatever billows over Edelgard’s head now - it is not always there.

Why is it here now? Because Dimitri lives? Because he was supposed to die at Gronder? Because he was supposed to meet her - later? in Fhirdiad?

Edelgard could have become what Dimitri had failed to be.

But it is too late. Even if he dies right now, it will be too late. That way is shut.

Dimitri presses his teeth together, tests out the words, but there are no two ways to put it. Everything is covered in a thin film, a pale muted border between him and the rest of the world. In this numbness, he might as well say it.

"Edelgard is my sister."

Felix's eyes widen in shock, narrow into slits half a second later. Dimitri hears his _'What?!'_ and _'Are you taking the piss?'_ and _'How - what - why'_ before Felix stiffens and slowly flexes his grip on the blade.

"Will you have the resolve to kill her?" he settles on asking, and his voice is steel, and his fingers are tight around it too.

If Dimitri is carnage - what does that make Felix?

"Yes," Dimitri answers resolutely. This is bigger than the sketch of their family bond.

"Why?" Felix is still all burrs, bruises, bristles. Has life truly left so many cracks in him, too? "Because the dead say so?"

The dead say that she is horrible and unforgivable. That she does not deserve to live when they do not get to, either. That this is the only way Dimitri will ever know peace.

What they do not seem to care about too much anymore is how Edelgard stands on the brink of the world that is ready to collapse. That unless this game is swept off the board in its entirety, those who live to see the future will wish they did not.

"Because I must break this wheel," Dimitri finally responds.

This is not the answer Felix was looking for, that is evident from the grimace of distaste that briefly crosses his face.

But still he does not leave.

*

_"Don't_ follow me!" Dimitri barks, and one of Ingrid's men - she has insisted on assigning guard to Dimitri - reels back in surprise.

Dimitri stalks off alone, a sense of urgency whipping him on even as his overheated joints protest the extra exertion. The salt-crusted planks of the docks creak heavily under his feet, and there are too many people around, and he needs to think, he needs to _think,_ he needs some _quiet._

"What do you think you are doing?" Father rages into his ear. "You despicable thing - I know what you're planning!"

Dimitri himself does _not_ know, but he needs to - he needs to…

Something big is happening, a great shift in the sands, and he needs to _comprehend_ it, and he hurries, cradling it carefully in his arms, scared of spilling it into nothingness if he is not swift enough.

Barrels were stacked for shipping but left behind in the commotion. Sometimes they are all destroyed, their broken ribs gaping at the smoke-filled sky before the planks beneath them fly up in a burst of splinters. But this time, some are still stacked - the ropes held, although a few got smashed by stray spells, and the heady, spicy smell of sun-heated wine wafts from the wooden floor.

Dimitri finds a spot among the stacks where the barrels form three walls around him, the open side facing the sea. The ships are skirting the horizon - they have not even left the Swallow Bay - furtive and shy even as the Derdrui'ni begin to wave them back to the haven. The air is frothing with the sounds of the sea and the birds and the people - it is too loud, and it is far from a proper lair, a proper hideout. But it will do. It will do.

Dimitri only barely does not drop Areadbhar onto the docks, leans it against the barrels instead. Leans back next to it. A weight pulses behind his eyes, pushes down on his tired shoulders, presses against the backs of his knees, but Dimitri's blood has yet to cease boiling after the battle. Tired and dizzy from the salty air, his body still is still revulsed at the idea of sitting down, and so he keeps standing.

Ghostly dead are knocking against the planks, sending vibrations through the soles of his feet as they are rocked by the oily waves.

A storm passed with Arundel's death, with Dimitri getting close enough to spear him through the heart in the chaos of the battle. A storm passed, and a tempest unrolled backwards, and Dimitri was flooded with such paramount sense or relief that his knees almost buckled. But the relief was not his own.

It was Edelgard's.

The visions billow, swirling like smoke, and Dimitri leans into them, opens himself to the clean, clear, singeing stream of headache. There is relief, and giddiness, and a hesitant joy, albeit bitter, tattered by something pungent - by the same kind of smell that follows Father and Stepmother and Uncle and Glenn around, like ruptures of water trailing ships, the same sense of weariness and frustration and inferiority…

Never in his life would Dimitri imagine to relate to Edelgard so particularly, and especially not now, as the road to Enbarr unrolls before his army, straightforward and inevitable.

But what comes afterwards? He goes to Enbarr - what happens there?

A vision hits Dimitri so hard he recoils as if from a gut punch. Edelgard is… It is her, there is not a doubt about it, but her towering shape - her arms like many-phalanxed legs of arachnids - her _face…_

Dimitri stands before her. Areadbhar is clenched tight in his hands, and his legs tense in the last moment before launching him forwards, into the clutch of the beast.

Dimitri shudders, shakes his head, but the void is pulling him in, and her arms feel _cold_ even through the armour where they grab at him, and the skin on Edelgards - creature's - face falls away, revealing the bloodless muscles, the white tendons, the pale shine of the teeth as she opens her mouth impossibly wide.

Dimitri reels back, gropes around his mind, searches again for the thread of relief that has wound itself around him earlier. Finds the cool spring of it, pushes his numb fingers into its soft flesh.

He goes to Enbarr - _and then what?_

Three battered countries, living in hard-won peace - no, two, because Claude is gone - wait, why? why would he be gone? He survived…

Claude is not there, but Edelgard is. And Dimitri does not have Areadbhar, but she smiles at him - uncertainly, warily, like she forgot how to do it - she probably did, just like he did - and offers him a dagger, handle-first. Dimitri recognizes the pattern of it.

The dagger he still hides among his few possessions. 

The blank emptiness beyond the palace of Enbarr fills and lifts and expands on an inhale, the blackness of it splitting into colours and sprawling shapes, molten metal scorching its way through an anthill.

Dimitri remembers this sensation, the everything-out-of-nothing. After Gronder, it left him drowning in despair. Now, however... 

The world is patched up - slowly, painfully, fighting the disease that clings stubbornly to its body, but there is a wistful, weary desire to restore, and to move forward, and to finally, finally lay down the weapons.

...Hope. That is the name for it. There is hope.

Why? Why? After everything she has done - how can Dimitri forgive her? Why does Arundel's death change so much?

Bony fingers close around his - not his - shoulder. A girl, not alone, until she is. Reality, woozy and sickening around and inside her. Faces that should be familiar, with unfamiliar eyes staring at her unblinkingly. Dark hair falling out in clumps, a white curtain descending over her face instead.

Every time Arundel is there, Edelgard steps onto the war path - and walks it until the end.

Every time Arundel is _not_ there…

Edelgard carries the fight in her, and she carries it until the end, by any means necessary, even through the most soul-crushing hopelessness. She sacrifices others, she sacrifices herself - but for her own ideals. Not for - not for Arundel, and not for those who…

Dimitri's heart seizes. Arundel is surrounded by the dying - why?

In his past life, when Dimitri spent nights on end hounding the change in the wind, the disappearing scent path that led from Remire to Arundel - was he right?

The damned _relief_ that cannot be anyone's but hers, a great, rusty shackle falling off a bruised neck - Dimitri knows this feeling very well, too. Knows the feeling of living with this shackle as well, and chafing against its unforgiving ridges, and gnawing at the chain.

Now that it is gone, now that the body of Arundel is cooling in a drying pool of blood on one of Derdriu's squares, what can Edelgard do? What can _they_ do together?

She watched - she stood complacent while they tortured and killed - she knew, and did nothing.

But is Dimitri not blameless? Are his hands not bloodstained? Did he not do the killing himself, at the bidding of his own demons?

Can they come back from this?

The sensation trickles, a faint sliver of it, and Dimitri holds onto it in his mind like trying to commit an unfamiliar melody to memory. If this is what can be - if they have the smallest chance at building something together…if there is a chance that he can _live,_ and _help,_ and _do good..._

Then this is a chance Dimitri cannot let go of. 

*

Arundel intended to level Derdriu. A lot of the times, he succeeds.

Cobblestones burst into the sky around Dimitri’s footsteps, their shards like pale silvery insects taking flight, stairways building up to heavens before they crumble under their own weight. Clouds of dust pass through him before dissipating into the warm air - settling on torn bodies, mixing their blood into dirt.

Dimitri keeps his eye lidded, his void deep. Derdriu still stands. They were on time. And with the city almost fully evacuated before Arundel breached its walls, as well as the defensive magic woven into its core, the casualties were minimal. It is almost as if Arundel thought it all to be a game - until it no longer was one.

Dimitri carries his living, living, _living_ body against the flow of people; it vibrates and buzzes, sharp with awareness, sizzling and - and tired, terribly tired, now that it might not be laid to rest quite so soon.

But Dimitri keeps walking. Battalions are relocating to hunker down for the night, fliers are directing their dusk-tired wyverns towards the roosting towers away from the windy shore. Many of the soldiers are bandaged; others still smell of healing magic: mint and king’s leaf and clover.

Dimitri steps onto the central square of Derdriu - the Square of Orchids, though the flowerbeds giving it its name have been burned to ashes. The square is an almost perfect circle, opening wide in the direction of the bay; the main streets run from it in cobbled rays. 

The healers have already set up their tents and strung up canvasses to shelter from the breeze blowing freely in from the water. Dimitri sees people he knows to be under Mercedes, walking in and out of some of the houses lining the square, spots Mercedes herself - they must have commandeered the buildings to treat the wounded inside. Which only seems fair: Dimitri does not foresee the fled Derdriu’ni to come back ashore so soon.

A monk in a mage’s robe is kneeling by an unrolled blanket, casting a potent charge of Recover - the air around him vibrates, sizzling into torn matter - but the soldier, a pegasus rider, her hair matted to her face with dried blood, does not stir. People are still streaming through the square, and Dimitri looks over their heads as the sudden spike of anxiety pokes the back of his throat: what of his generals? He does not see any of them being treated - does not normally see most of them here - this means they are alive...or?

Felix was next to him when the signal bells of the haven tolled victory, and Ingrid whirled through the sky, her silvery armour burned to bronze by the setting sun, and he saw Mercedes just now, and Hilda - Dimitri has not seen her, but _will_ see in a minute, he knows - she will be next to Claude. In the times Derdriu stands, Claude and Hilda find each other first.

What of the rest?

There are too many people around him. Too many shadows. Dimitri turns his head slowly, searching for the signs, putting together the patterns.

That monk would not have stopped after one Recover - he keeps casting it futilely in the times he has to see Annette die - but how often is he there to know? Oh - almost always - he is her student, he is always there unless...unless the rest of the battalion is dead.

Dimitri remembers seeing the dark blue robes of the mages on his way to the square. This means Annette is alive.

Dimitri looks around, stepping cautiously through the makeshift canvassed streets running like fractures through the square, until he spots another group of monks, half-concealed by a canvas as they sit in a circle with their eyes closed, recharging their healing spells. They are not alive - none of them are - unless Lysithea silences and obliterates an enemy mage, who, with the ferocity of a cornered animal, tries to attack the group with a saved Meteor spell after the battle has already ended.

Dimitri keeps walking, careful and watchful, and a man passes him by, pale and shaky but definitely alive - except for when his skin is not pale but ashen, and his eyes are dull and sunken in their sockets. He bleeds out - an afterthought of a fight, a sheen of rust crawling along iron that has been left under the elements - unless Marianne is there, _here_ somewhere, to tend to him on time.

As for Byleth - Dimitri saw them briefly after their arrival in the city, and his side ached at the sight of the sword as it gnashed and split the sky in blinding arcs. He put it out of his mind at the time, but now the sensation returns. Dimitri presses a hand forcefully against the armour, watches it come away dry. The ache fades.

They lived too, he knows. They will not die for a while yet.

Dimitri’s generals are alive, and the army sprawls in the streets, licking its wounds and rubbing its sore muscles and slapping away dusk-hungry mosquitoes.

They got through it. Not unscathed, but they did.

“Your Highness!”

Ingrid is walking down the narrow passage between the tents. 

Last night, at Annette’s suggestion, the mages charged and placed shields on the fliers, as their mounts were making them the biggest targets. This is the time when Ingrid’s shield held.

“Ingrid,” Dimitri greets her; leans aside to let a healer pass with a pail of steaming water. “I am glad to see you.”

“And I, you,” Ingrid smiles back, but the line of her mouth is strained, her eyes trained straight through Dimitri’s shoulder. A bird’s flight, interrupted.

Her face is tired and drawn, and Dimitri knows before she has to say anything that she has lost people today.

He clenches his teeth tight around the pang of guilt.

“Do you need anything?” Dimitri asks, immediately groaning inwardly at himself.

But what words can ever be right, here?

“Oh?” Ingrid’s eyes finally find his. “Oh no, I - thank you, but I was just heading over to the kitchens. They mentioned meat for tonight, and, well - we could all use a good dinner.”

They stand in silence for a short while, suspended in silence among the bustling people, the charges of healing spells going off like puffs of pollen. The leveled cobblestones are floating skywards around them, sleepy and unhurried, as if under the pull of a Slowing hex.

“Then I shall not stand between you and your goal,” Dimitri moves again and turns, leaving enough space for Ingrid to pass.

“Wouldn’t you like to eat as well?” she asks.

Dimitri pauses to listen. He is supposed to talk to Claude about something - is that where he will find him?

No. He is here somewhere. And the place where they are going to talk will shimmer with strands of gold, and it will be loud, but not from the people or visions.

“No, thank you,” Dimitri shakes his head. “Maybe later.”

The very middle of the square, a small area around a carved marble fountain, has been left free for easier access to water. Claude is sitting on the stone with his back turned towards the gurgling streams erupting from the geometrical perfections of flowers; Hilda is perched next to him, arms crossed, bandaged leg swaying idly in the air. 

Both look alright, if a little battered: Claude got caught against shoreline when his wyvern was hit in the wing and his healed arm failed him, and the tension has yet to bleed out of his squared shoulders. As for Hilda - in the times she flies here from Fhirdiad, she almost always ends up wounded. The times Claude takes her with him instead of Byleth are not quite as forgiving.

The whistle of falling water grates on Dimitri’s ears, crawls into his head to brush against the ache in it, and he does not - he cannot glimpse the upcoming conversation. He halts for a moment as two people walk past, maneuvering a stretcher between them.

And that is when Claude spots him. He says something quickly to Hilda, keeping his eyes on Dimitri, as if afraid to lose sight, and gets up.

"Your Princeliness, if you have a moment," he jogs over, halting before Dimitri. He is impatient though, shifting his weight on the worn cobblestones. 

Sometimes, he is not there. Sometimes, his burned body is floating face-down in the bay, and a whole continent shifts its bulk in response.

"What is it?" Dimitri watches Hilda roll her eyes, but she does not follow Claude, crossing her legs at the ankles as she turns her head away and stares off into nothing.

"I'd like to talk to you about something - alone, except for…" Claude trails off, and looks around, muttering something under his breath. The burns on his face shift as he does, part around a grin, fade. "Ah, Felix! My dear classmate. Come here."

Dimitri follows the direction of his gaze, his heart skipping a tentative beat. 

Felix is skirting the edge of the cleared space with a focused look on his face even as he swerves to avoid other people. He turns his head when Claude calls out to him and scowls, but then his eyes flick to Dimitri. The scowl deepens and he slows to a stop, his hands coming up to rest on his hips.

"What is it?" Felix scoffs, his words only barely reaching them over the noise of the fountain between them. The lines of him blur and weave into each other through the water. "I'm busy - Ingrid said…"

"You'll have time for it later, _come on."_

Felix circles the fountain with a long-suffering eye-roll. "Von Riegan, I'm hungry. If you are _wasting_ my time…"

Claude shakes his head. "Always of so little faith…"

"Am I wrong to be?"

"Eh, depends on who you ask," Claude shrugs and looks between them. "Anyway, let's go. It's just next street."

Dimitri cocks a brow at Felix, who cringes in response.

"What is just next street?" Dimitri asks, but Claude's back is already disappearing among the tents, so they have no choice but to follow.

Claude ducks into a narrow gallery, leading them through its shadow until they come up to a small ornate gate.

"Is this…your house?" Dimitri asks as Claude unlocks the gate and invites them in with an exaggerated bow.

The house is in Derdriu'ni fashion, as much as Dimitri knows anything about it: a wide and low structure made of white-painted limestone, with a small decorative garden in the front and a pebbled path to the front doors. It shares walls with the buildings on both sides, but there is probably a bigger garden behind it.

The reason for Dimitri's doubt, even though Claude had a key for the gate and now heads towards the doors with another key on the same ring, is a big, masterfully painted mural of Seiros to the right of the doors. The saint, clad in billowing silks, is opening her arms to the viewer, and her eyes are half-lidded in what looks like rapturous bliss.

"Oh goodness, no," Claude laughs as he unlocks the carved wooden shutters and pulls them outwards, taking time to tie each to small metal hoops sticking out of the wall. He flaps a hand at the mural. "Not my style, really."

"Are we - are we breaking into someone's home?" Felix's nose wrinkles and he stops dead - and this is where he turns around and leaves - and Dimitri is suddenly extremely conscious of where his uninvited footsteps fall. "Claude, I told you not to waste my…"

"All perfectly legal, I assure you,” Claude interrupts him effortlessly. “We do need to talk, I was just hoping to combine it with something else on my to-do list."

Dimitri sighs. "And that would be…?"

Claude gets up from where he has been crouching as he wrestled with another lock, and he finally swings the doors open.

"Birds, of course!"

The cacophony of bird calls and cries hits Dimitri almost like a physical punch to the head, the noises rattling around his skull, shaking the pain into shrill, pulsating stabs. He fights his face as it tries to contort itself into a grimace, fights the impulse to reach up and rub at his forehead - it will not help anyway. He steps over the threshold after Claude, a habit prompting him to inhale as he does, the air in the room mixing with the air already in his lungs. He discerns nothing but the warm, downy smell of animals and the soft scents of sweating flowers.

The room fills the whole length of the house, the back wall replaced with folding doors, and every other wall is lined with dozens and _dozens_ of cages. Birds are fluttering inside, alone or in pairs or in small groups - colourful, anxious hurricanes, agitated from the sudden intrusion, yelling their surprise at the strangers.

The birds are dead, their curled feet clawing at the still air. The birds are dead, and the house is razed to the ground. A thin smell of rot shifts under the cover of powdered limestone. 

Dimitri attempts to count the shrieking birds but gives up almost immediately. The shiny wires of the cages mince the air into stripes like glinting needles. The last of the syrupy sunlight oozes in through the round ceiling vents, bathing the cages in muted gold.

"Hey there, hey there!" Claude says in a sing-song voice, walking around the room in a loose circle. "It's all good, buddies."

When Dimitri glances at Felix, he looks ready to give up. A small stray feather flutters towards him, and Felix flicks at it in half-hearted frustration.

"Are you ever gonna tell us the whole thing or do we have to wheedle it out of you piece by bloody piece?" he asks.

Claude unlocks a cage with a big, silky-looking grey parrot, and after a brief inspection is allowed to give the bird a neck scritch. "You're truly no fun, Felix," he says after cooing at the parrot under his breath. "None whatsoever."

Now that the initial surprise is wearing off, Dimitri casts a proper look about. Beyond the carved folding doors, the house opens into a veranda, with a gazebo visible further back among the flowers and a dome built of wires, almost as wide as the house - definitely taller. There are two chairs and a low table on the veranda: thin, elegant shapes with patterned cushions. Dried flowers are arranged in bouquets on the walls; vases with wilting ones stand on the table of what must be a dining area of the house. There are two doors along the right wall, but both are closed.

"Does a friend of yours live here?" Dimitri guesses.

"They are my mother's friend, technically - Lady Pallas." Claude gives the parrot one last scritch and closes the cage. "They probably won't come ashore until tomorrow at least, so they asked me if I could check on the birds," Claude pauses as something occurs to him. "I suppose they figured that if I lived, I might as well be useful, and if I didn't, there wouldn't _be_ any birds to worry about. So - here we are."

“You brought us here to feed birds?” Felix scowls, crossing his arms over his chest. A cockatiel of gentle, pink colouring in the cage closest to him squawks and flares its bright red crest. The scowl is instantly redirected at the bird. “Get lost.”

“Come on Felix, will you stop acting like Byleth’s put you on weeding duty?” A hint of tired tension creeps into Claude’s voice. “The sooner we are done here, the sooner you can be on your merry way.”

“What do we need to do?” Dimitri asks. His head is throbbing; he can barely hear anything over the bird calls.

“That’s my man,” Claude gives him an appreciative grin. “Alright, over there,” he points at one of the doors, “is the kitchen. Lady Pallas should’ve left everything out, so Felix, you can get to chopping the fruit. And Dimitri - go down to the cellar and grab some ice from the cooling pot, it'll have a bowl. I’ll be right back.”

With that, Claude ducks out of the house and disappears from view among the flowers, and Dimitri and Felix have nothing left to do but follow the instructions. The cellar is tiny, only barely big enough to fit Dimitri’s stooped form. The cooling pot - well, two pots, with a layer of wet sand packed between them - reveals a small pile of ice chips. A sharp smell hits Dimitri when he closes a hand around them, something he cannot immediately place, shriller and more potent than peppermint.

By the time Dimitri maneuvers himself back up the narrow ladder, clutching a wooden bowl with the ice chips, Felix is already at the counter, busy cutting up a small mountain of apples, bananas, and papayas and grumbling under his breath. He is using one of his daggers to do it and frowns when he notices Dimitri looking.

“Their knives are a disgrace,” he complains, unprompted, his hands not pausing for a moment.

Claude arrives with an armful of thick flower spikes, a bright firework of reds, pinks, and oranges cradled against his chest. He dumps the flowers on a different counter and ropes Dimitri into helping him mix the seeds from several canvas bags. They crouch together right on the floor.

"I never got the chance to thank you for the save with all the commotion," Claude says around a small smile, measuring out a few cups of buckwheat into a big bowl with several other grains already in it. "So - thanks. Good timing."

"It was nothing," Dimitri replies and watches Claude's forehead wrinkle as he contorts his eyebrows into an odd shape.

"Well, no, with all due respect, I wouldn't exactly call it 'nothing',” he mixes in bright streaks of dried corn kernels. “Arundel seemed pretty keen to sink the city, and I'm - well - partial to it, as well as to the whole 'living' thing. Pass me the flax - no, that’s hemp - farther right, the brown ones."

Dimitri hands him the half-empty bag. Claude does not mention Arundel's revelation. Dimitri does not remember him being within earshot when it happened, only Felix and maybe Mercedes - or was it Lysithea? Has nobody told him yet? Dimitri doubts this kind of news is going to stay bitten back for long.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Dimitri asks instead.

Claude frowns briefly. “Not quite. Got interrupted, as you can imagine. I am going to speak to someone tomorrow, but more for my own peace of mind than anything. Might be helpful for you later.”

He is leaving something out. What is it? ‘Leaving’ - that is the key word. Leaving the investigation to someone else? Why?

"Anyway, no point in dwelling on it," Claude says when Dimitri remains silent. He distractedly kneads the muscles of his right forearm, winces. "Off to new horizons and all that, right?" 

His voice lifts like a waft of hot air. Sand rolls on Dimitri's tongue, sticks to his teeth. 

This is it.

"What do you mean?" he speaks through it.

Claude laughs. "No need to be so suspicious! I'm only - well," he sighs, looking for a second towards the ceiling. A beat passes, a moment is committed to memory. "I'm giving you the Alliance, Your Princeliness. It's bound to happen anyway, so - why wait? I've wasted too much time here already."

Dimitri shakes his head, almost waves off the idea - the Alliance? back under the wing of the Kingdom? - because, after way too many years, the pieces finally click.

“You are going to…” he blurts out. “You are leaving.”

Belatedly, he realizes that the sounds of Felix’s assault on the fruit have ceased. He is viscerally aware of Felix’s taut presence behind his back.

“You _what?”_ Felix snaps, and Claude cranes his neck to grin at him.

“I thought you’d’ve guessed by now! But yeah, I’m going to Almyra.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Felix scowls. “But I was expecting the Hell Man to take the lead.”

“And he might still, if Dimitri so decides - but as the governor of the Leicester lands within the Kingdom.”

Dimitri barely pays attention as his attention slips inwards again. He once watched performers from borderland Gautier, who were skilled in riding two horses at the same time, balancing with one foot on each saddle. He was absolutely enraptured and strangely anxious, twitching on his feet as he tried to imagine how hard it must be to pay such close attention to two things at once.

The anxiety thrumming through him now feels very similar.

“The lords of the Alliance will never agree to that,” Dimitri says.

“They were actually quite receptive to the idea,” Claude shrugs and lifts the bowl, giving it a careful shake. “The declaration is already signed and everything, I have the scroll with my things, Teach has a copy.” He stands up, the bowl at his hip, and looks down at Dimitri. “You might be underestimating how tired people are of being at war.”

They make a tour of the room, feeding the birds while Felix switches out their water. The thawed ice turns out to be eucalyptus nectar, and a pair of rainbow-coloured parrots gets a cup of it along with Claude’s flowers.

Dimitri watches him place the blossoms into the cage, and the tiny petals, wet with the evening dew, cling to his fingers like blood.

Claude is clutching the reins, but everything is slipping further and further out of his control. The net is woven too tightly, its iron strands too sharp to allow a misstep. A stray animal that smells too different to be accepted back into the pack; the pack, winding the noose tighter around it with every languid step.

If Claude goes to Almyra now…

Almyra is not Derdriu. No flier will be fast enough to reach him, no blade will be quick enough to cut through the net. Not that it would be of any use even if they were.

Claude is smart, of course. Claude is anything but a fool, anything but helpless or naive. But sometimes, greater numbers and a better purchase on the ground are all that matters.

Claude lets out a dramatic sigh, startling Dimitri out of his thoughts. “Aw _come on,_ don’t say it.”

Dimitri knits his brows in confusion, still dazed from the feeling of the heavy coil around his neck. “Say what?”

Claude locks the cage as the parrots yip and shred the offerings, and motions for Dimitri to follow him to the next one with the bowl already half-empty of seeds. 

“You’re gonna tearfully beg me not to go.”

Dimitri’s eyes widen, his thumb pressing forcefully into the rim of the bowl. Does he know? How does he know?

Claude casts a quick look over his shoulder, busy with the cockatiel’s cage. “You’re making the same face you made back when I said I was going to Derdriu. That anxious puppy look is hard to forget.”

“But was I wrong about Derdriu?” Dimitri presses. “You cannot go now.”

This is not just Claude, he reminds himself. This is Almyra's future. Fódlan's future. 

Claude smiles a crooked smile, blinks slowly, like he wants to cover up an eyeroll. "Because it's dangerous, right?" 

The sands will have time to shift into a new picture if Claude can be delayed. The pack, devoid of a stranger to shred, will eventually begin devouring itself. If Claude arrives _then_ and not earlier… 

"Listen," Dimitri begins; in the corner of his eye, he notices Felix watching them silently. "I know you think you know what you are doing - that you know it better than me. And you do!" he hurries to add at the incredulous hitch to Claude's eyebrows. "But…" Dimitri sighs, feeling himself deflate, faced, again, with the unsolvable problem. "I - cannot tell you how I know this, but I do. Just…could you trust me on this?" 

Claude studies him like he always does, intent and precise, a surgeon puzzling out a strange and curious defect. Dimitri looks away, knocking into Felix's gaze instead - but he glances away as well, busying himself with a big cage housing half a dozen canaries. 

Dimitri waits. The world hangs in balance, suspended from the strands of bird cries. 

Claude drops his head into his hand and lets out a helpless laugh. "You're full of secrets, Your Princeliness, you know that?" He looks up at Dimitri again. "Very, very peculiar." 

Dimitri can only give him a blank look, tense as the threads shiver and stretch over sharp edges. 

Claude shakes his head with a huff. "We've already _signed_ and everything!" But he grins as he looks at Dimitri and seems to take pity on him. "Alright, I suppose we can postpone this. I'll lead my people to Enbarr with you, but after that, I'm out." 

Reality shudders and settles, a great mountain taking a heavy breath. Something else settles alongside it, the curve of a path growing more pronounced, but Dimitri does his best to push it away for now. There will be time later. 

“Thank you, Claude,” he says instead. “I appreciate it greatly.” 

Claude flicks it away. “Eh, it's ‘nothing’, as some would call it.” His eyes turn serious when he looks at Dimitri. "I won't swear fealty to you, mind. And I'm still going to leave. But I'll do my part."

Dimitri only smiles and nods in response.

They are on the right path.

*

The numerous discharges of Dark magic have warped and marred the fabric of Derdriu, weighing down the air and souring the clouds. Their bruises finally crack apart after nightfall and release a storm from their leaden shells.

The storm catches the generals in a spacious house, great streams of it hammering down on the ceiling windows and tearing at the locked shutters. Claude has graciously invited everyone in for a glass of wine, although Dimitri is almost entirely certain this is not his house either - unless Claude is _really_ into Morfisan weave poetry. Dimitri is sure that Claude must have a residence in the city as well, but he deflects a direct question from Ingrid - thus briefly infuriating her - and the matter is dropped.

The big open area of the house is filled with furniture dragged in from the garden, and they make do, arranging it in a loose circle and settling on the pillows thrown over the bamboo structures.

People are drained. The mood is subdued, none of the raucous celebration of survival that spilled out of them in Fhirdiad.

No, not just that. There is something else. The growth of it bulges, ready to burst, and Dimitri waits for the snap.

"So, _Your Highness,"_ Hilda runs a finger along the rim of her still mostly full glass, coaxing a thin whistle out of it. "When were you going to tell us about the whole family thing?" 

Dimitri does not tense - simply because he was expecting this moment to come all evening. He is tense enough already. 

“What thing?” Annette whips her head around, but quiets when Mercedes places a hand on her knee.

It is too late. “Oh, nothing,” Hilda pulls another thin whine out of her glass. “Just that he and Edelgard are apparently siblings or whatever.”

The stalks of bamboo creak as people shift in their seats. The conversations around the spacious room halt and fall into one another, break off mid-sentence and start anew and fade.

Mercedes and Annette lean into each other on their couch, whispering hastily. Ingrid’s posture is perfectly straight where she is perched above them. She looks just past Dimitri with her face pinched in an expression he cannot name. How would he feel in her place? Betrayed, possibly?

Lysithea hisses something at Hilda, turns to Claude on her other side with a demanding glare on her face, but he only smiles with his eyebrows raised and head tilted - and exchanges quick silent looks with Byleth.

Next to Dimitri, Marianne worries a small woven basket in her hands that she was inspecting earlier, nervously running her fingertips along the checkerboard of Morfisan symbols.

Felix is motionless, only leaning slightly away when Marianne nearly jabs him with a pointy elbow in her fretting. He looks over everyone’s heads with his jaw clenched - but he already knows, of course. He was probably waiting for this moment just as Dimitri was.

“I’m sorry, _what?”_ Lysithea bursts out at the room at large when she fails to engage Claude. She waves her hands in impotent frustration. “Were you ever going to tell us any of that?”

Her tone pulls Ingrid out of her stupor, and she whirls around so quickly she nearly kicks Annette in the back as she tries to stay on her perch. “Why would His Highness have to divulge something so personal?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Hilda stops torturing her glass and puts it down, twirling a lock of her hair around her fingers instead. “Just as a fun fact, I suppose. A bonding tidbit.”

“Fighting your family is already hard,” Mercedes points out. Beside her, Annette nods vigorously, cheeks reddened and fists clenched in her lap. Mercedes reaches around Ingrid’s leg and places a soothing hand on one of Annette’s fists. “And so much is at stake, after all.”

A shadow behind Mercedes. Horsehair and porcelain.

“Exactly, though,” Lysithea is still fuming, dragging Dimitri away from the silhouette. _“Will_ you be able to fight her?”

They always fight. It always comes down to a fight. And once Edelgard is on the floor - in the times when Dimitri’s ribcage is not caved in between the jaws of her axe - when he is still standing, though both of them are torn and threaded with the glint of each other’s weapons - once she is before him…

“I will,” he responds firmly.

His words seem to let some tension out of the room, though people are still far from soothed, still figuring out their footing as the world suddenly shifted.

“Will you be able to _kill_ her?” Claude muses across from Dimitri.

How strange it is, to be asked this after everything. 

Claude knew already, Dimitri realizes, though his blood does not run faster at the thought - he is hardly surprised. That is how Hilda knew too, of course. They planned for this conversation to happen here, with everyone around.

Dimitri reaches out again, probing at the visions like swollen gums around a cracked tooth. Traces their shapes carefully, slipping between the images where they overlap too much to make out properly.

But he sees enough.

It is going to be a risk, like everything is.

But the path is growing narrower. Soon, they will stand before each other, with one final decision left.

“I will if I have to,” Dimitri says.

A murmur ripples through the group. Felix’s eyes are on him, amber burning bright on his sharp face.

He speaks here, sometimes. 

Not this time.

“‘Have to’?” Byleth’s voice cuts through the murmurs instead. They are watching Dimitri, swirling the wine in their glass in a repetitive motion that reminds of cogs rotating as the clock hand moves. Earlier, they were laughing quietly and joking with their students about something, putting away tremendous amounts of alcohol, but now their gaze is blank and relaxed once more, water swelling from under low-tide sand.

Dimitri is seventeen again, forcing his sluggish mind through defence tactics as Byleth is waiting for his answer, leaning back on their desk, and they cannot possibly know that he failed to study the night before, yet it somehow feels like they do.

He looks at everyone again. They have followed him this far - out of duty before their home, faith in him, or private reasons of their own. He may have led them to Fhirdiad, but his dogged obsession with Edelgard’s head was never made secret, and they have grown to view it tangled up so closely with ending the war as to be indistinguishable from it, even though few of them would default to such violence if faced with the same decision. How will it go now? How will they react to his last-minute maneuver?

“I think…” Dimitri begins slowly. “I think there may be a way to resolve this without bloodshed.”

*

Dimitri talks. Everyone else listens.

He explains as much as he can possibly put into words how he has reasons to expect that Edelgard might be open to negotiations. They _are_ still marching south, there is no doubt about that. They are still going to storm Enbarr, possibly even the palace, so even if she agrees to the parley, it will not end the war - but the seeds Dimitri will have the chance to plant there might.

If he plays it all right - if he makes no mistakes…

There will be no more death.

His arguments are gossamer-thin and would not stand up to the slightest scrutiny - and sometimes the questions do come, the prods and pokes at Dimitri’s flimsy defences. Someone ties his change of heart to Edelgard being his sister, while others argue that it has not exactly been news to Dimitri.

But none of that happens this time. After initial shock and suspicion grow threadbare, people are almost eager to discard them and dive instead into the logistics of their next step. Ingrid and Marianne discuss how long they would have to stay in Derdriu for the flying mounts to recover after two battles and a grueling flight in between, and Claude’s words come back to Dimitri as he is listening to them talk.

Maybe he is right. Maybe people _are_ tired of war, so much that they are ready to accept whatever change of heart their leader suddenly has if it brings them closer to the end of it.

Dimitri recalls the settling feeling, its languid slide through him when Claude agreed to postpone his journey to Almyra. Him still being here, him still going south with them - this is the right path. In the times when Dimitri succeeds, Claude is there to witness it.

The sensation unfolds in the core of his mind the same way a forgotten thought clicks back into being. Dimitri nods wordlessly to himself.

*

Eventually, they retire for the night: some people leaving to check up on their battalions, others accepting invitations from Claude to various vacated houses in Derdriu. Dimitri shakes his head at Claude’s offer and settles deeper in his chair as the others get up to go - he does not expect to sleep tonight. His temples buzz in an unnecessary warning, the hum crashing ashore of his mind like the waves up in the bay. 

He will not be allowed rest. The ghosts will have something to say.

Dimitri sits silently in the creaky chair as the night singes its furry bulk on the still-burning candles. The base of his skull grows numb with anticipatory ache.

The door behind him opens, and Dimitri turns quickly around, brows pinched in confusion - the ghosts never need to pretend like that.

Glenn enters - but no - it is Felix. 

Dimiri’s confusion is not placated. Did he forget something?

Felix closes the door behind him, a stubborn set to his jaw. Oh - right - that is not why he is here. _Sometimes_ he does forget something here, but not now.

He stayed silent in front of the group, doubtlessly aware of how precariously everyone’s agreement teetered for a moment. For all his harshness and brazen words, he never aims to destroy what he deems useful. But now, away from everyone’s eyes, he is off the self-imposed leash.

And yet, Felix hesitates to attack as he strides over and lowers himself into the chair across from Dimitri - the one Claude occupied earlier. Silence coils between them like a snake.

Dimitri closes his eye for a moment. This is not a good time to talk. It was a long day - a long _week_ \- they are both tired. This will be useless.

But Felix desires to pick at the wounds.

Dimitri tenses and relaxes his muscles, a full body sigh. Gives him an opening. “It all went rather well, would you not say so?”

Felix bristles readily. “I’m hardly surprised. Those _fools_ will follow you anywhere.”

Dimitri nods - he expected as much. Felix’s acceptance of him has always been conditional, still has a ‘but’ hanging off the end of it. Dimitri wonders, sometimes, what sequence of events, what winding paths would lead the two of them along the footsteps left by their fathers. He stopped looking for those branches a while ago. It hurts to search.

Dimitri shifts in his seat, tamping down on the childish impulse to pull his knees up. As if it would protect him any.

“You told me you were going to kill her - just yesterday, in fact,” Felix grits out, as if he caught Dimitri on a blatant lie.

Dimitri smiles half-heartedly. “And here I thought you would be happy to see me abandon my quest for vengeance.”

Felix ignores him, unamused. “And then _today,_ Arundel calls you siblings, and suddenly you want to play nice. Why?”

The headache that lay somewhat dormant after dinner is slowly shifting into something less insidious as it smells blood.

“It’s - not about what he said.”

Felix frowns, purses his lips. “What is it, then?”

Marianne forgot to put the basket back on the shelf before she left. Dimitri picks up the tiny thing from the chair next to him, turning it over in his hands. He does not know Morfisan, but remembers that they use a syllabic system of writing - in their woven poetry, the lines can be read in any direction, with fitting syllables taking place at the intersections. A love ballad read horizontally turns into a tale of sorrow when read vertically. The most skillful weavers and poets - they are the same people in Morfis - can braid up to nine stories into one object.

Dimitri wonders what kind of stories are threaded into this one, or how many, but the meaning of the patterns is obscured from him in a very familiar way. 

“Arundel’s death… I do not think that Edelgard worked with him of her own free will.”

Felix huffs and rubs his forehead. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

His words are serrated but dulled. He is tired of hounding Dimitri, too.

“I think that - it’s all starting to make sense. Well, not all, but some of it,” Dimitri says, watching where his hands are cradling the basket, dwarfing its delicate ribs. “I wish to talk with her. If I strike her down, I need to be sure there is no other choice.”

Felix leans back in his seat but gets up in the next moment to pace the loose circle of the furniture.

“You are a fool to believe she can be reasoned with,” his voice reaches Dimitri over the sounds of his caged footsteps. “She supported Cornelia in Fhirdiad, for fuck’s sake. Made her the Duchess of Itha, before the whole country was turned into a dukedom.” He pauses to throw a glare at Dimitri. “Are you siding with the person who sided with Cornelia? _Excusing_ her?”

_“Don’t.”_

Dimitri’s spine runs cold and spiky. He places the basket back on the seat, aware of his twitching, restless fingers. Felix has the decency to look chastised.

This is not fair. Felix was not there when…

But also, _Dimitri_ was not there for the five years that came after. Felix has suffered losses, too. This is not a competition.

But neither is it a mindless execution.

“I need to talk with her, Felix.”

Goddess, even his voice sounds so tired.

Felix stills again on a half-turn. His slitted eye simmers when he looks at Dimitri, and something too jagged, too - open - flashes across his face before he finishes the turn and stops with his back to Dimitri.

“Fine,” his voice is quiet. “Be like that.”

The conversation ends there. In his exhaustion, Dimitri loses track of time shortly afterwards, drifting in the rippling twilight, but not much of it must have passed when he comes back to, because the candles are still burning. 

Felix, however, is gone.

*

Felix might not understand Dimitri’s reasoning, but his disagreement is nothing compared to Glenn’s.

“This is what we’ve been working towards for _years,_ and you’re tossing it!” he hisses, pacing in front of Dimitri much like Felix did before him. Blood trails his footsteps, goopy and rotten. Old. “And because of what? Belated familial feelings? What about your _real_ family?”

Dimitri holds the wax-thick air in his lungs, spills it out between his teeth. Glenn has been attacking him for a while now and only seems to grow madder no matter what Dimitri says. There is no reasoning with him.

“I see the future she and I can build together,” he tries anyway, saying it as a reminder to himself as well, as the faint tune threatens to unravel and fade completely. Holds the burning images in his mind, in his aching, scarred hands. 

“You moron,” Glenn’s voice rises even as he cuts deeper still. “You drive me _mad._ Why are you still playing at sanity and reason when you are nothing but a _beast?”_

Dimitri stills, sliced open on the edge of the word; breathes in carefully, trying to pull back in everything that comes oozing shamefully out.

Glenn is unrelenting. Frighteningly angry, a hurricane trapped in a circle of woven bamboo. A Demonic Beast with its chest torn open. _“She_ is the reason everything is going to the eternal flames! _She’s_ the reason your father’s dead! The reason _I’m_ dead! Don’t you give a fuck about that? I could’ve been _alive_ right now!”

Dimitri leans heavily forwards, rests his elbows on his knees, bent under the sudden and cadaverous sorrow.

It was never going to be so easy. No matter what the ghosts told him - there was never such a simple solution.

“You are wrong.” Dimitri gives in to the weight, feels it squeeze the words out of the moss in his lungs. “She is not the reason. And you _could_ have been, but not - not because of her.” A vision grazes the edge of his sight, another person beside him instead of Glenn in thin Duscuri air. “Edelgard’s death will not unmake yours. It was never going to.”

It all makes sense now, he muses. If only he could have realized it sooner. He wonders if he should be feeling anything.

Glenn is silent. When Dimitri lifts his head to look at him, the scorch marks of his eyes carve the distance between them to the bone. His fury bubbles like blood thrown on the pavestones heated to the point of burning - and rises in a dust cloud swept up by the boiling storm.

“I will kill you,” he grits out, taking a step towards Dimitri. The roll of thunder rumbles closer, cracking apart the air that’s stinging Dimitri’s skin.

“You can’t,” Dimitri says. His voice is steady; his gaze is steady - he wills them so. “You can’t, Glenn, I am sorry.”

Glenn will never be alive again. Glenn is - not real. 

Suddenly, Dimitri feels like he is about to shatter, the cracks spidering through the initial apathy. The ache in his head changes in pitch, a drawn out cry or a plucked string ringing in his ears. Buries all other sounds in its web.

Glenn rushes him, and Dimitri’s body reacts before his mind can, raising its splintering shield to meet the attack. A ghost of a movement against the backs of his knees, a faint vibration of the floor - his chair must have toppled backwards, but Dimitri hunches forward unthinkingly, bracing himself.

Something smashes under his chin - a hand - fingers squeezing around his throat, and Dimitri opens his eye - when has he closed it? - but only darkness greets him. Wind howls in great surges, whipping gusts of icy water across Dimitri’s face, and he strikes out against the attacker, but another push catches him off-balance, and he stumbles backwards until his shoulder collides with something solid and immovable. Things are crashing to the floor all around him, and the vise around his throat _will not let up,_ and Dimitri squeezes his useless eye shut again and struggles harder even as the middle of his chest seizes with sharp pain.

Dimitri slips to the side in an attempt to evade, but the grip follows, and he does not know any longer where he is or what is around him - when has it suddenly become so dark? Where are the candles? Goddess, if any are still burning and he knocks them over - the bamboo…

A voice cuts through the howling, through the stuttering whine of pain in his head.

“Dimitri!” it calls. “Boar! Calm down!”

Felix?

Why is he - what is he doing here?

All Dimitri can smell is wind and water and _rot,_ but he tries to straighten up, tries to strike out against the grip around his throat, but there is - nobody, there is nobody before him, there is no hand. There is no Glenn.

Dimitri pulls in a gulp of air that shreds his cramped throat on its way down. He leans back against something sturdy that digs into the small of his back - a bookcase - shifts and glances down when something crunches underfoot.

Broken pieces of glass. The void relinquishes a shattered window to Dimitri’s right, the shutters banging against the wall outside as the heavy carcass of rain tumbles over the sill and into the room. The sparse moonlight speckles the glass shards, casts jagged, cold scars of shadows across Felix’s face.

“Are you sane?” he calls out over the wind. A twisted mass of bamboo cross-hatches the landscape between them, furniture jumbled together in Dimitri’s flight. 

Felix’s question does not sound like an insult. It sounds like...a question.

Dimitri tries to think it over, but his body is shivering too badly, the webbing of it drawn taut and painful, distracting, forcing itself to the forefront of his mind. He fights the urge to sink into a crouch; the ribs of the shelves grow into his spine where he presses back against them.

He hears Felix curse, hears him stride over to the window and wrestle the shutters back into position, plunging the room into a muted hum. Hears him curse again - quieter - over the short snaps of lightning, the crackle as a wick catches on and a candle breathes into life.

Felix’s gaze is hard and intent when he picks up the candle in its silver holder moves it slowly from side to side, surveying the damage. He would seem calm to an untrained mind. Agitation looks so strange on him - after all, it is not as if - it is not as if someone has died.

Well - someone has. A long time ago. And that is rather the point.

Glenn flickers into existence where the shadows quiver and bleed into the yellow light. Dimitri glances at him, back at Felix.

The confirmation feels like stale marsh water pooling in the cavity of his chest.

Glenn is not real.

“I’m fine,” Dimitri remembers to answer. Thinks back to the question. “Sane.”

As he ever is.

“Then what the fuck was all this?” Felix counters. The anxious, dancing light of the candle is obscuring his face. “Fighting with your ghosts?”

How much has he heard?

Dimitri pulls at the tangle in his chest, digs into it with his fingers and teeth, but it does not yield its meaning. He should be feeling like his world was turned upside down. Like everything he has known for a decade turned out to be a lie. Like he has lived for nothing.

But he only feels strangely unsettled - uprooted, numb, his snapped threads shivering in the cold. Maybe, deep down, he knew this all along.

Dimitri nods. “Something like that.”

Felix moves, and the light shifts and steadies as he puts the candle down on a table they have moved up against the opposite wall earlier in the evening. He leans back against the edge of it, crossing his arms, eyes fixed on the darkness beyond the window. 

Dimitri shakes his head, and his hair brushes his bruised - not bruised - neck. A coldness grazes his edges with every exhale, shackling them with ice only for it to melt next time his ribcage expands. He is just - tired. He has been tired for a very long time.

Felix moves, settling firmer against the table. He is probably waiting for something, a signal, a trigger to kick him into the next step, but Dimitri cannot parse anything beyond the ice - cannot parse anything within it, either.

A storm rages outside the walls, and a wounded, ugly snarl is rotting inside Dimitri’s chest, and Felix is caught in the strange pocket of calm in between.

“I’m fine,” Dimitri repeats, not knowing what else to say.

“Right,” Felix’s response crosses the jumbled distance between them, the ire in it burning to ash on its way over.

Dimitri nods. Then, something else occurs to him.

“Why did you…”

“Forgot my stuff,” Felix interrupts him without offering anything else.

Glass shards glint against Dimitri’s boots, starving for the meager candlelight, but the inky swirls of the shadows are greedier. Wind throws great sheets of rain against the windows, a titan demanding to be let in again. Blood pulses in Dimitri’s nape where its flow is halted against one of the shelves, and it throbs brighter every time Dimitri breathes.

He does not move.

Across from him, Felix stands silent guard.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, well,” Edelgard speaks over the crackle of raindrops against the leaves. “It's been a long time, Dimitri.” She turns her head a fraction, her gaze shifts impassively to Dimitri’s right. “And hello to you too, Felix.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a very tame chapter in terms of CWs :) wahoo

_i walked to you through seven deaths,_

_my friend - i wove a net of spells for you,_

_my foe - finally, i’m standing at your door:_

_wake up -_

_and look at me_

They take three nights to rest in Derdriu. At the end of the third day, a bird arrives with a letter from Rodrigue letting them know that the rest of the army has set out for Garreg Mach one day after their departure - and that the western front has begun to waver.

It is decided to fly out to Garreg Mach at dawn of the fourth day, in that narrow strip, sunlit and cool, where the wyverns are already awake enough and the pegasi are not yet sluggish from the heat. It will take the bulk of the army quite some time to reach the monastery from Fhirdiad, and so the fliers set a moderate pace, touching down at Garreg Mach grounds four days later.

Dimitri would really not mind never having to fly again.

The rest of the army arrives two days later. Dimitri summons people to the war room on the same day, where they settle around the still-unrolled map while he is rearranging the figurines, now at the head of the table rather than tucked shamefully away at the side of it. Claude gives him a knowing smile before taking a place to his left. Byleth and Lorenz sit down next to him, while the other side is taken by Sylvain, Ingrid, Ferdinand, and Felix.

It is only a handful of people: this meeting is meant strictly to arrange the bones of the plan, and so Dimitri finds it unnecessary to bring everyone in. 

Strictly speaking, he does not even need his childhood friends to be here right now. But Merceus glares at them from the map, a sharp fang in the slender dragon jaw sloping down to Enbarr, and it might not be the same as their games of dragonslayers, but having them here is still strangely comforting.

“Why can’t we just go around it?” Lorenz asks, clicking his nails against the worn surface of the table. “We would do well to spare the manpower before throwing all of it at the gates of Enbarr, what with my people already busy holding down Myrrdin.”

“What an idiot,” Father grimaces disdainfully from behind Dimitri’s left shoulder; Dimitri turns his head to keep him in his field of view. “Remind me how this stick insect got control of half the Alliance.”

They ghosts have not left him alone despite the encounter with Glenn in Derdriu. Even Glenn is still here, lurking in the periphery, sullen and silently mad. If anything, they have been even more violent lately, haunting Dimitri’s every step, plaguing every moment, sleeping or waking. The four of them loom behind Dimitri now as well, whisper in his ears, cover the back of his neck with a thin layer of hoarfrost that shackles his spine until he feels like every movement would crack him.

Real or not real, they are woven too tightly into the fabric of Dimitri’s being - he only hopes that they release him after Enbarr.

His head is killing him. He has not slept last night - and the night before, as well. The monastery is a cracked webbing of ghosts, fog clinging to the hems of his clothes and the ends of his hair and the walls of his blood vessels. It makes him too restless to sleep.

Right. Lorenz has asked a question - Dimitri casts his mind back to the sound of his voice.

He knows that there is no way around Merceus. Still, he turns to a native for the answer.

“Ah, you see,” Ferdinand perks up in his chair. “The Dleri Mountains are quite uncrossable aside from the Merceus Pass. You could argue that crossing the Merc River to the east of the mountains would prove an easier feat, but half of the Duchy of Aegir - ah, I mean…” he shifts uncomfortably. “Half of the _former_ Duchy of Aegir is, regrettably, one big swamp this time of year. It is artificial - an irrigation system we have devised to prevent forest fires and plant rice at the same time - I’ll be happy to tell you more at another time, if you wish.”

Lorenz frowns, and it takes Dimitri no effort at all to guess his thoughts. The Gloucester warhorses are the heavier kind - they will waste a moon trying to cross the rice fields alone, not to mention the rest of the way.

Speaking of which…

Dimitri peers down at the map. “Do we know how long the march to Merceus is?”

Ingrid’s face sours. “You prefer infantry speed, I assume?” She waits for Dimitri to nod, then retrieves a note and unfolds it before nudging Sylvain to pass it to Dimitri. “Byleth and I were discussing that earlier today. Considering the terrain and the upwards slope as we go into the mountains after the Bergliez territory...it will be around thirty-six days of walking only.”

Dimitri’s blood freezes. That is over a _moon_ of a continuous march, not to mention all the fighting they might have to do on the way - which also leads to wounds that slow people down and burden the animals. Can they know for sure what they are going to face in the imperial territory?

Dimitri exhales the frozen air sharply through his nose. One thing at a time.

“What about Translocation?” he lets his eye glide over the faces. “Can we shave off some time this way?”

They all look at each other before Byleth speaks up. “As the most - ahem - qualified magic user among us, my expert opinion is that we ask an _actual_ expert.”

Right. Dimitri resists the urge to pinch his nose bridge. “Send for Annette and Lysithea, then.”

Once the two of them arrive, they quickly whisper between themselves and turn back to the room with a decisive nod.

“You’re asking us to Translocate thousands of people across - how many kilometers was it again?” Lysithea asks.

Dimitri checks the numbers in Ingrid’s note. “About nine hundred, the way we would march. Half that in a straight line.”

“No, that’s insane,” Lysithea shakes her head while Annette presses her lips together with a worried face. “We’re not Translocating an entire army across four and a half hundred kilometers - not unless you want all your mages to bleed from their eyes, and not even then.”

“That would be _useful,”_ Uncle hisses somewhere behind Dimitri; if he concentrates, he can almost hear him pace. “Use them and toss them, just like it’s supposed to be.”

Dimitri gives an involuntary jerk of his head, tilts it to sides as if to stretch his neck. Uncle huffs a dry laugh.

“What we _could_ do though,” Annette takes a step forward, obviously bothered by Lysithea’s tone. “What we could do is Translocate over shorter distances and with longer breaks in between? Warp might even be enough for this. So we would still take the route that leads over Myrrdin - I guess that’s the plan?” she glances down at the map, nods to herself. “This way, we could cut down on traveling time.”

“What would your estimations be?” Sylvain asks, and Annette and Lysithea get to whispering again.

“Around...twenty days? If all goes well?” Annette suggests with an apologetic expression before her expression turns defensive. “It’s not simple magic, you know!”

_“And,”_ Lysithea chimes in, “the mages are going to be useless after that for a _very_ long time. Maybe until Enbarr, maybe longer. I’m not going to risk causing my troops permanent damage.”

“I am not asking you to,” Dimitri shakes his head. “Twenty days would be good enough for me.”

Lysithea grinds her thumbs into the palms of her hands, flexes her fingers. “Then that’s what you shall get. In this case, come, Annette, we have a lot of preparations to do.” With that, they make their exit.

“Very well.” Dimitri clenches and unclenches his fists under the table, where no one can see him do it; brings them out again to gesture at the map. “I am guessing that the Alliance territories will let us pass unchallenged,” he pauses for nods of confirmation from Claude and Lorenz, then turns to Ferdinand. “After Myrrdin, our route will lie through the territories of Bergliez and Aegir. What can you tell us about that?”

Ferdinand taps a finger against his chin, then folds his hands on the table. “Merceus was always under the twin protection of both duchies, manned by whoever was decided by the tradition that stems from… ah, right, that is unimportant right now. _Right now,_ Aegir is ruled by Lucretia Cordita - a woman from the branch of the von Hresvelg family. However,” he purses his lips; a wrinkle appears on his brow, “they are a line of shipwrights, originally from the northern part of Hresvelg.”

“Which means they have no knowledge of mountain warfare,” Sylvain leans forward so that he can look at Ferdinand from around Ingrid. There is a sharp, bird of prey glint in his eyes.

“Exactly,” Ferdinand inclines his head.

Dimitri thinks this over. “So we should expect von Bergliez to pick up the slack, then.”

A shadow passes over Ferdinand’s face, a swift cloud blurring the sun for a moment. “Caspar - yes.”

Somebody else is there too, most of the time. A dark, stifling presence - a familiar one, in a sense a poisoned, chilling blade fits seamlessly into a wound it has left. Another person behind it, too - a noble from the Bergliez Duchy? No, someone else - parchment, hair ties, stones warmed by the sunlight. Who?

“Caspar? Not his father?” Dimitri asks instead.

“Count Bergliez is dead,” Claude speaks up with an uncomfortable grin. “We killed him at Gronder. Edelgard threw him at us.”

Right - Gronder. The eye of a hurricane with so many paths twisting into an impossible knot. Dimitri knew of the Bergliez troops' wipeout - but the Count usually lives, he thought he lived this time as well… But apparently not.

There is a time when Dimitri kills Caspar’s kin too - an uncle, perhaps? But when? And where? The tension of it is a film on water - gossamer, vague. It does not feel like a future - more like a past that did not come to be, a broken branch swaying in the wind.

“The new Count - his brother Randolph - will be leading what remains of the Bergliez troops, so we’ll definitely meet them in the valley if Caspar is left to man Merceus,” Ferdinand offers.

_Randolph von Bergliez_. Dimitri is raving, mad, unfurling his claws to dig them into the man’s face, but somebody stops him - no. Somebody kills von Bergliez faster.

Dimitri presses his teeth together, grinding the not-memory between them.

“Then we will crush them,” he agrees with Ferdinand, unsticking his jaw again. His blood calms from the sudden rush into something tired and sticky, devoid of the splintering heat he was once used to being speared through at the thought of carnage. The majority of Bergliez people capable of holding a weapon died at Gronder, thrown to the wolves to cover up Edelgard’s retreat. Their defeat will come easily - and even still, Dimitri is unhappy.

One of the ghosts growls at his moroseness. He does not look back to find out who.

Felix considers him with his head tilted and eyes narrowed, then turns his steely gaze to Ferdinand.

“What about your duchy?” he asks, uncaring of how Ferdinand twitches at the mention of it. “Will your people want to fight once they know it’s you and your battalions they’ll be going up against?”

Ferdinand gives him a small, apologetic smile. “I wish I could say.”

Ingrid is wearing a frown, and Dimitri guesses the cause for it to be Sylvain drumming his fingers on the table as he seems to be lost in thought, but then she lifts her eyes to Dimitri’s own.

“Who do we leave there afterwards?” she asks. “With a quarter of our troops already staying back in Fhirdiad to assist Rodrigue, and with the mages’ strength to be depleted after the march - can we afford stationing enough people at Merceus?”

Once again, everybody looks to Ferdinand to respond. “In the event that Caspar does not yield…” he muses. “I suppose Bernadetta would be the obvious choice. Von Varleys are well loved, so the people are likely to respect her claim - and I daresay she is quite adept at hunkering down and defending a keep.”

“Cheers to that,” Claude raises an imaginary glass with a knowing smile. “I think Merceus will be safe in Bernie’s hands. If it’s not, that’ll simply mean that we have bigger problems to deal with than just one unruly stronghold.”

Dimitri nods reflexively, only half-following. The map bubbles and caves around Merceus, inverting the mountains, and something tells him that the question is not going to be relevant in the end. Something _bad_ happens at Merceus, bigger and more violent than any thunderstorm - oh, they _do_ take it, most of the times. But it is what comes afterwards that draws taut the bowstring of his spine.

But Merceus must be taken. There is no way around it - physically or metaphorically.

“There is one more thing,” Dimitri says; everybody’s attention snapping to him feels like a blow; he battles the sudden desire to massage his aching temples. “Once we take Merceus, I want a message sent to Edelgard. I have mentioned this before, and I am sure you remember - I wish to parley with her once we are close to Enbarr.”

“Are you not afraid of her and Hubert taking you on?” Lorenz asks.

“The whelp has a point for once,” Father whispers, his cracked lips close enough that Dimitri flinches away from the stench of his breath. “Aren’t you afraid? Or are you, perhaps, excited to get them alone with you? With no one but us as your witnesses as you tear them apart?”

Dimitri wants to strike out at him. Wants to tell him to stop. But he only closes his eye and allows himself to keep it that way for a fraction longer than a regular blink. He cannot afford anything else.

Dimitri opens his eye and levels an even look at Lorenz. “If there is a possibility that we can avoid storming Enbarr, I wish to explore it.”

There is none. They always storm Enbarr - by now, the path has narrowed enough that all other realities have been scorched clean off. But that is not the reason Dimitri wishes to talk.

The balance is delicate. They are going to fight regardless, but it is what comes after the fight that will decide the furl of their futures. Edelgard needs to know - to remember - that there is a solution to all of this. She needs to face Dimitri after the battle and see his outstretched hand for what it is.

And she will parley only if cornered. Backed into that corner firmly enough that she feels the press of it, but without pushing in so closely that she is forced to lash out, her reason clouded beyond comprehension. Taking Merceus should prove to be a correct weight added to the scales.

And besides - there is something else, something small and sharp - another reason to meet with her. Dimitri cannot grasp it right now, but not because it is something too blurry or too indeterminable slipping out of his grasp - he has simply forgotten. The feel of it is different, a negative space, an emptiness where a thought once was. But it will surely come back.

Byleth contemplates the map from their place at the table. “Regardless, we can’t allow the empire to box us in in the mountains. Which includes taking Merceus quickly enough that we don’t run out of soldiers or supplies.” They lift their pale eyes at Dimitri, and their gaze is ancient. “It would be a bad death.”

“Then again,” Father rubs his chin; the rotten, blackened skin moves obscenely. “All those villages...unprotected, unwalled, _begging_ to be pillaged. You could sustain yourself this way for _moons,_ no problem.” Dimitri catches his eye, and a grin messily splits Father’s face. “What? What did you think I was up to in Sreng?”

“Stop!” Dimitri barks. This is too much, they are too much, and the word is too loud and too sharp as it stabs outwards from him, and everybody is looking…

Dimitri takes a deep breath, holds it, trying to ignore the saccharine poison of rot permeating the air. Lets his lungs saturate with it, so that perhaps none would come back out.

“We’re done here,” Felix snaps, rising from his chair. “We’ve got troops to prepare, no time to waste. The rest can wait.”

Dimitri inclines his head in silent thanks and finally lifts a hand to his burning forehead as everybody files out of the room. With another heavy sigh, he gets up as well at the end of the small procession.

“Hey, Your Highness,” Sylvain catches him, also lagging behind, “I found something in your room, figured I should show you in case you were missing it.”

He hands him something wrapped in a cloth - and the weight sinks into Dimitri’s hand in a familiar shape. The dagger.

So _that_ is what he has forgotten.

Dimitri has been wondering about it. Because this is _the_ dagger, the one he gave Edelgard all those years ago - the one she dropped in her flight as the Flame Emperor - the one that often, so often ends up buried in his chest. Which means that he is supposed to return it to her before their last stand.

Dimitri considers other paths. Considers leaving the dagger behind - but those never end well. A heart that turns to stone, a stone that turns to wax - the weight of the dagger rests on the scales along with everything else.

The times when Edelgard does not arrive at their meeting at all and he gets to keep the dagger go even worse. She does not come because she is distrustful - wary - dismissive - _busy_ turning herself into something...something huge and monstrous that rises tall, ripping the sky apart in its many claws.

Dimitri does not want that. With a belated ‘thank you’ to Sylvain, he heads to the armoury, to find a fitting sheath.

Two weeks pass in preparations. The monastery grounds are tense and crackly with magic as the battalions of mages store charges and charges of Translocating spells. Spellcraft masters create additional binds, to be charged and transported on carts; many of the mages even get new tattoos for easier use. Every evening they appear more exhausted than the day before, some almost nodding off into their bowls at dinner, but Dimitri trusts his generals not to push them over the edge. He cannot allow himself this kind of worry.

With the mages busy solely with getting them to Merceus, priests and clerics take up the responsibility of battle magic on top of their healing duties. Something hard and steely toes the edges of Mercedes these days, a lethal kind of grace, and Dimitri is not sure what he will find if he looks too hard at the person who should not have ever known anything but mercy.

They leave for Merceus at the end of the Garland Moon. If the Goddess will have it, they will take the stronghold three weeks from now. 

Dimitri throws one last look at Garreg Mach as they are exiting the valley, before the pocked flank of the mountainside nudges itself between them. Another place he might be leaving for good - another island, sinking into the bottomless deep.

The mages focus their translocating efforts on the slowest people - both light and armoured infantry - and at first the human bodies protest the rough treatment and people grow nauseous and unsteady, but eventually most of them adapt to it - even come to appreciate not having to march from one hill to the next. The fliers and the riders can afford to take a more moderate pace, moving alongside the jerky, convulsing serpent of the infantry tearing itself through the fabric of space, and Dimitri is extremely grateful for his warhorse, hand-picked by Marianne with the promise of being cooperative enough to suffer his presence. 

The mages strain with the effort. In the twilight, their sprawling camp glows with healing magic, meditation circles sprouting all over it like mushrooms. But every morning and every evening Annette and Lysithea come to make their reports, and every time they insist on continuing - and Dimitri trusts them.

They cross Myrrdin at the beginning of the second week of marching, the fortress-bridge flying golden Alliance banners with burning rubies of red roses proudly set in the middle. A speck dives from the sky, becoming a wyvern - Hilda lands hurriedly somewhere to the east of the bridge on the Adrestian side, where Dimitri can just about make out a mountain ram on the banners.

Lorenz stays behind to talk to his men as the army passes over the acidic water of Airmid burning its way through the stone down below, and Ferdinand takes his place at the head of the column, to Dimitri’s left side as Felix is riding on his right.

A small company in imperial colours awaits them at the other end of it, appearing suddenly from Airmid’s mist, and Dimitri’s heart picks up the pace - could it be? - but then Ferdinand makes a strangled noise and kicks his horse into a canter, all proper conduct forgotten as he charges ahead of his commander.

To follow him is an unconscious thought, and as Dimitri nears the small group he notices that nobody is pulling out their weapons.

“Aphelia!” Ferdinand cries out, jumping off of his horse before it even has the chance to come to a stop; his squire scrambles to catch the reins. “Seiros and all Saints - I thought you were dead!”

Dimitri’s gaze rakes over the group. Half a dozen, three men and three women - in the standard imperial armour, yes, but the tattered banner in the hands of one of the men bears the image of a rearing Adrestian Thoroughbred.

“Still not so easy to kill, my lord,” the woman Ferdinand has addressed smiles, pulling her hood down; a thick black braid coils from her shoulder like a snake. She bows at the waist and straightens up again, looking between him and Dimitri, glancing at Felix. “Aphelia Regard, of the House Regard in Aegir, retainer to Lord Ferdinand. Welcome to Adrestia, my lords.”

“But how - what - why…?” Ferdinand raises his hands helplessly, unable to find the words.

Aphelia takes mercy on him. “Lucretia Cordita is dead - we heard that you were coming and pulled together the forces to overthrow her hold on the capital.”

“What do you mean - is Rán free from Enbarr?” Ferdinand asks, suddenly looking dangerously close to tears.

“Rán and the rest of the Aegir Duchy, my lord. Yours to command. Yours to cross on your way south.”

Dimitri’s eye narrows. This changes things - this means that they do not have to go through Bergliez. Do not have to kill Randolph. The ripple travels outwards, snagging on the jagged walls of Merceus, and Dimitri follows the movement.

“This is incredible news - Goddess, I am so relieved,” Ferdinand shakes his head, and as his long hair briefly conceals his face Dimitri recognizes the gesture of guilt. “You cannot imagine - but my gratitude is endless. Oh - what of my father? He was placed under house arrest…”

“And escaped as we stormed the castle, yes. However, he - I’m afraid we don’t know where he is right now. There was no body in the moat, no tracks in the forest - it’s like he has vanished,” Aphelia shrugs. “For all intents and purposes, you are the Duke of Aegir now, my lord.”

Ferdinand stays silent for a few moments, and Dimitri watches the imperials again. They look battered and tired, but hold themselves up straight in the presence of their exiled lord.

Out of nowhere, Dimitri wonders if they are going to sing for Ferdinand.

“This is incredible,” Ferdinand says finally. “I am in awe of all of you - and I commend your efforts to the highest degree. What you did is nothing short of a feat, although I have never had reason to doubt you.”

Aphelia grins, teeth glinting on her tan, wind-whipped face. “Well - it’s not like we were entirely without assistance, my lord…”

“What do you mean?” Ferdinand asks, clearly not following, but a thread pulls on Dimitri’s mind, snapping his attention to the woman keeping herself to the back of the group, the one with her hood still pulled low over her face - cold, cruel gold, velvet and silk, flimsy and furious love of the crowd…

The moment before it clicks, Ferdinand cries out, “Dorothea?!”

The woman - and it _is_ her, Dorothea Arnault _-_ finally pulls her hood back in a graceful motion. 

“Hey there, busy bee,” she greets Ferdinand with a sly smile. “Finally coming back to your family hive, I take it?”

Her smile doesn’t stay there for long before she gets crushed against Ferdinand’s armoured chest. On Dimitri’s right, the void harrumphs in Felix’s voice.

“Ah, there you are!” Claude reins his horse in next to them. “Way to make an entrance, darling.”

Dorothea finally frees herself from Ferdinand grasp - it looks like the man really is crying now as he accepts a handkerchief from Aphelia - and gives Claude an exaggerated, flourished curtsy. “Well, you know how it is, _darling._ Opera houses are hard to get into when you’re undercover - what’s a girl to do but make her own performance?”

“I can’t argue with that without looking like a fool,” Claude reasons. “All good?”

Dorothea shrugs noncommittally with one hand on her waist. “Nothing that can’t wait until later.” Obviously, she would not report to Claude in front of everyone. “Your Highness,” her green eyes suddenly find Dimitri’s, “glad to see you in good health. Suits you.”

Dimitri is not sure if he is supposed to take it as a compliment or the opposite of one, and so he lets it go. She was in Faerghus two moons ago, was she not? The things she must have seen… “You too,” he responds reflexively and sweeps his gaze over the small group. “We are looking for passage to Merceus.”

“We advise that you go straight south through Gronder Field,” Aphelia says. “Von Varleys retreated west to lick their wounds after the battle two moons ago and shouldn’t be a problem, but Bergliez lies directly in your way if you take the Pilgrim’s Road.”

“We cannot waste time on a roundabout,” Dimitri shakes his head; his stomach churns. To skirt the edge of Aegir is one thing - to go through the capital is another. “We must be in Merceus in two weeks.”

“Hm,” Aphelia taps a finger against her chin - a gesture Dimitri remembers from Ferdinand. “My lord, may I suggest something?”

“Please,” Ferdinand easily gives his permission.

Aphelia nods and turns back to Dimitri. “We are here on pegasi. We can fly out to Aegir tonight and send horses your way, to bring your infantry over. It will take your cavalry a week, at most, to reach Rán, and our horses can meet you halfway.”

Dimitri considers her offer. It _does_ sound like a good solution - and this way, they can spare the mages the strain.

He looks back at the coiling body of the army as the soldiers arrive at the Alliance end of the bridge, preparing for crossing one battalion after another. The fliers are circling overhead, scouts venturing out to all sides.

“It would be acceptable,” Dimitri says. “Thank you.”

“Gladly, my lord,” Aphelia gives another bow. “Von Hresvelg family has harmed our land and our people - we are ready to aid you however we can in your fight against them.”

“That’s what I was wondering,” Ferdinand speaks again. “Do we - does the Duchy have enough horses, after everything that happened?”

“The horses are not the problem.” The skin around Aphelia’s eyes grows tight. “It’s riders we are short on.”

“Right. Certainly,” Ferdinand’s head moves in an aborted nod. “I’m sorry.”

To her credit, Aphelia does not hurry to absolve him. “You’re back,” she says simply and shrugs.

Dimitri’s mind turns north. He saw Fhirdiad so briefly, through such a thick screen of smoke and darkness and loss - and as soon as he tries to crystallize any images out of the fog, his mind swerves away from them as if burned. He already carries the memory of the defiled palace within himself - and it only promises to get worse from there.

*

Dimitri rolls his shoulders back and briefly rises to his full height, bracing against the wind. Its merciless coldness coats his lungs in glittering ice as he takes a deep breath. He cannot help the smile that pulls at his lips, cannot help the satisfied sigh that steams in front of his face.

It feels _so good_ to be cold again.

The Dleri Mountains are a lot taller than those housing Garreg Mach, and so the air turns thinner and more brittle the higher they go even despite the hot Adrestian summer raging down below.

His fellow Faerghans welcome the change in temperature too, though Annette bemoans briefly the way the frigid air affects the conduction of magic, calling it ‘all pointy and slippery’, whatever that might mean. Upon hearing that, Lysithea quickly extracts a hand from the furs she is bundled into to test the waters, makes a contemplative face and calls Annette over to talk, and by the end of that day the mages are already instructed in how to adjust for the change.

They are all walking now: the wind is too harsh and unpredictable for the fliers to be safe in the sky, not to mention the near-lethargy it puts the wyverns into, and as they reach the snow line, it becomes both safer and warmer to unburden the mounts and continue on foot.

It feels like Faerghus - and Dimitri realizes he does not have a clear memory of the last time he has experienced winter there. Possibly as far back as his seventeenth birthday, the last winter before he came to Garreg Mach.

They are ready for the cold, of course: all magic wielders have Fire spells stored, and even those who do not rely on it in combat were heavily encouraged to be prepared all the same.

Still, they should not linger.

*

“You want to _what,”_ Dimitri asks, hoping against all knowledge that he has somehow misheard.

They are holding council in Dimitri’s tent, sitting on furs thrown around a brazier - and it feels like he will never get used to it, to sleeping in an actual _tent_ while on a march when only a few moons ago he would just topple over whenever he could no longer walk - and the more they talk, the more surreal it all feels. Right now, for example, it seems eerily like Claude has suggested that they stage a fight to get into the stronghold.

“Think about it,” Claude was twirling an arrow ever since his fingers unfroze but now he grips it tight, interrupting the movement, and sketches patterns in the air with the tip. “It’s the ‘Impregnable Fortress’, right? Capital letters and all. How do you propose we get into something of this scale?”

Dimitri purses his lips, considering their choices. He _was_ thinking about…

“No, don’t tell me you want to take it head on,” Claude guesses his thoughts - apparently they are obvious enough. “That’s suicide, trust me. And - come on, we’ve talked about this - if we end up having to besiege it, it’ll be _moons_ before they run out of supplies. Enbarr will have more than enough time to send reinforcements, and we’re done in for - if the illnesses don’t get us first. Or, you know, winter in the mountains.”

“I agree,” Lorenz grouses. “Summer is bad enough already.”

Felix wrinkles his nose but says nothing, eyes as bright as the coals in the brazier.

Tomorrow, they will attack Merceus. Earlier this day, Ingrid chanced the winds to scout from above and nearly got hit by an arrow from one of the fortress’ towers. Evidently, the Adrestians are not inclined to negotiate.

So all that is left to decide is their strategy while the mages are finishing the weave of the concealing spell around their camp where it’s squeezed into a narrow snowed-in valley, sloping downwards into a ravine.

“Besides, we already know that the Death Knight has made it his hidey hole,” Claude continues - something they have learned from Aphelia’s people. “This scheme is our surest way to come out of this alive _and_ with Merceus waving the ol’ blue-and-silver’s at our backs.”

“The weather will probably be bad enough that they won’t know who’s who if we stage a fight,” Sylvain chimes in with his eyebrows raised. “So it’s like...not impossible.”

Is this what they are supposed to do? Is this why Claude is here - because without him, Dimitri would never even consider anything other than a direct attack?

Claude has been slightly off ever since Derdriu, agitated but covering it up well enough that Dimitri would not notice anything wrong if he did not suspect it there. But whatever it is, it calls Claude to Enbarr as surely as his promise to Dimitri, and that will have to be enough.

But why does Dimitri not see a clear outcome of Claude’s plan for Merceus? What prevents them from going through with it?

Because it is incomplete.

“Is there not a way to sneak into Merceus?” on a hunch, he addresses Ferdinand, who has been silent this entire time. “Getting one group of people inside will not be enough to launch the battle, but if we can have another group get in while everyone’s attention is focused elsewhere, we will stand a better chance at ending this quickly.”

Ferdinand looks at him with a curious look in his eyes. “A good guess, I will give you that. The Dleri River begins its flow north of Merceus, goes _through_ it, and descends south from there.” It takes him an obvious effort to get the words out, even now. “All the waterways are...reinforced, of course. But not guarded.”

Dimitri nods. “Then this is what we shall do…”

*

The next day, they put the plan into motion. Claude, Hilda, and Dorothea, with their natural affinity for theatrics and Dorothea’s thickened accent, take over the preparation and execution of the decoy. Ingrid, Felix, and Ferdinand lead a group to sneak in through the waterways - and the rest of the army feigns a chase after the ‘imperials’ who are dressed in the armour borrowed from Ferdinand’s people and pretending to be Lucretia’s troops.

Despite being Dimitri’s plan in the end, it is definitely not something he would have gone for unprompted; but this way, he knows, saves them precious time.

He watches Dorothea converse with Claude as they prepare for their headstart, her Dancer outfit - apparently she has retrained during the war - foregone in favour of something warmer. While on the march to Rán, Dorothea has told him a few scant pieces of information she has learned during her time in Faerghus - and the one that gnaws on his mind concerns Viscount Kleiman and his implication in what has happened in Duscur, the man who was responsible for the destruction of an entire nation - and then given its remnants to rule over. The man who, according to Dorothea, was very likely at fault for Father’s blood, for Glenn’s blood. 

Dimitri spent the night after receiving the news away from people, his throat thick with rage and grief - for his family, for his hands, for the people of Duscur - and violently missing Dedue. Stepmother watched him with her gaze heavy and buzzing, but once Dimitri had cried himself out, the one thing he could do was to let it go for the time being, too busy with the present and too far away from home to look into its mangled past.

He wonders if Rodrigue knows this already somehow. They have agreed to cease correspondence, though encoded, to minimize the risks of any information falling into the wrong hands, and so Dimitri does not know what is happening in Fhirdiad.

He can only hope that this news will reach Rodrigue one way or another, if he is not to return. That he will know to deliver justice.

*

Taking Merceus turns out to be almost laughably easy in the end - as much as warfare can be something to laugh about. 

The defence is led by Caspar and the von Hevring heir - and Linhardt ends up surrendering first, with a strange air of frustrated indifference and marrow-deep exhaustion that Dimitri cannot help commiserating with. Caspar, who has been putting up a formidable fight up until that point, curses and throws his double-headed axe to the ground once he sees Linhardt’s hands lower and curl into loose fists.

The fort is secured, and there is the shortest lull after the horns sound off, their calls wheezing in the snow-filled wind. And then, instead of dying down, the vibration of the air heightens and changes and turns piercing and angry, and the ground rips to shreds beneath their feet - and an answering hum shakes the sky as the snowstorm parts in blinding light. Something long and sharp and terrible pierces the clouds, the gigantic columns hurtling towards the waiting ground.

They are swallowed by the chasm around Merceus. 

The world explodes into chaos.

Dimitri calls for retreat, roars himself hoarse while barely hearing his own voice. The air around him is straight from a nightmare, thick and wild and shuddering with fear.

They roll down the mountainside as quickly as they can, formation be damned, and come to rest in the serpentine valley of Dleri, just below the snow line, to clean their wounds and count their losses and try to make any sense at all of what has just happened.

The people are drained, moving around uncertainly on shaking legs, with dazed, vacant expressions on their faces - Dimitri notices Mercedes and Marianne already organizing the healers, checking people’s hearing, gentling them into rest even as they themselves are pale and brittle with residual fear. 

It is incomprehensible. Impossible. War is understandable, simple: a clash of steel on steel, a mace crunching through bone, and even the too-fast flight of an arrow is started by a living person’s hand.

But this - this is something else entirely, something not-living, unappealable, cruel; heavens themselves shooting to kill.

Just a few short moons ago, Dimitri would have kept pushing, uncaring of the damage - or would have walked off alone, pulled south by an unyielding metallic string threaded through his heart. Now, he digs his heels in against the pull, and understands, and encourages his people to breathe.

Not everyone was lucky to escape in time. His generals are alive - as far as Dimitri knows, as far as he can feel in the silhouettes around him - and even Caspar and Linhardt were pulled out in time when Hilda and Ingrid weighed their chances and decided that if death were to come for them, they would rather greet it in the sky. But many horses panicked and stumbled and were lost. And many of the infantry soldiers were not _quite_ fast enough.

The Death Knight disappeared in the commotion. He spent the battle without engaging, simply observing it from one of the towers until its tide turned irreversibly in the Kingdom's favour. Did he leave before the blazing monstrosities struck the stronghold? Did he orchestrate it somehow? Or was he a pawn? Someone under Edelgard’s command or a watchful eye of whoever worked with Arundel?

Dimitri’s vision swims briefly as he tries to grasp at the images, the dry sensation of porcelain pressing against the backs of his eyes. He relents, letting the churning fog fade from view.

Dimitri allows himself a moment to squeeze his burning head, its sutures splitting as the fabric of reality frays the way it always does around the scorch marks of deaths. Then he gets up and goes to make his rounds through their temporary camp as his generals tally the losses.

He ponders for a while what to do with the captured imperials and briefly considers returning them to Edelgard as a sign of goodwill, should she agree to parley. But when he reaches the tail end of the camp where he knows Linhardt and Caspar to be, he finds them huddled together with the other Adrestians, and is later presented with Caspar’s somehow-preserved axe. Linhardt, weaponless, settles for an awkward handwave, while Ferdinand, Dorothea, and Bernadetta stand next to them, anxiously awaiting Dimitri’s verdict. His skin stings from Linhardt’s Wind spell that had missed him at Gronder.

He accepts them, of course. What else is he to do? He cannot allow himself to dwell on those realities where this leads to betrayal, just like he could not dwell on whatever happened with Annette on the battlements of Fhirdiad.

Claude finds Dimitri then, bringing the numbers on the Alliance side and a bewildered ‘So what in the flames _was_ that?’, and that is when Linhardt’s disinterested eyes narrow as he carefully considers something.

Before Dimitri can discern what is forming behind his teeth, Linhardt tells them that he might have an idea as to what those ‘javelins of light’ were, as he has apparently researched something similar back in Garreg Mach. Claude’s whole _being_ changes at the words, not unlike a hound’s lithe body as it scents prey, and he drags Linhardt away - presumably to pick his brain.

*

They march south, along the lazy sprawl of Dleri, along the edge of the Morgaine Ravine; cross Velgё where it separates from Dleri and turns back north, towards the Ionii Bay. Fort Merceus has always been the most vicious protector of Enbarr, and now that it has fallen - in all senses - Dimitri’s army only comes across the trampled grass of abandoned camps as the imperials are retreating into Enbarr right ahead of them, preparing for the last battle.

Their steps are falling on Hresvelgё soil now, and while the civilians in the towns and villages they come across do not take up arms against them - most of the time, with Dimitri firmly forbidding retaliation - neither are they too inclined to trade. Dimitri sends his best negotiators, sends Adrestians - and sometimes it helps.

The locals demand gold and silver in exchange for food, cloth, and steel. Dimitri, without a coin in his pockets, with Fhirdiad and the whole of Faerghus ransacked, turns to the nobles of Leicester, freely writing out checks to ensure that he remembers to repay them after the war. Lorenz throws a fit, of course, demands to know why they have to give away their precious metals and content themselves with paper when the same paper could be offered to Adrestians, but Dimitri does not give in. If he - or he and Edelgard, or Edelgard alone - if they are destined to rule a united Fódlan, if, in just a few short weeks, all these people are to become someone’s subjects, together, he would much rather inconvenience the nobility than starve the common folk.

Their journey nears its end together with the first week of the Verdant Rain Moon. They make camp on Dleri, one day of marching away from Enbarr, but Dimitri tells everyone to expect to stay for two nights - Edelgard’s window to respond to his call. It is usually enough, but he watches the short stretch of it anxiously all the same.

Dimitri need not have worried. The same day, a boy is brought to him, spindly and cagey and covered in dust; one of the soldiers leads a donkey that he must have ridden here. 

The boy does not speak Fódlani, but Dorothea turns out to be nearby and steps in to translate, familiar with his accented Southern Adrestian.

“Emperor Edelgard sent a falcon to our village - Nymede,” the boy says when prompted to speak; waits with a heavy glare for Dorothea to translate. “She said she will meet you tomorrow, two thirds of the way from here, south of the Hratka village. At sunset.”

People murmur around them. At sunset? A trap in the darkness?

Dimitri thinks over his words. “Did she say anything else?”

Dorothea repeats the question. The boy frowns, sniffs, runs a finger under his nose. He cannot be older than fourteen - something dark prickles the back of Dimitri’s neck when he tries to recall himself at this age.

“Uh - _‘Let our actions be confined to our words’,”_ the boy grits out.

Dimitri nods. _“‘And our words to be those of equals’,”_ he responds, though he does not know if the villagers will send her the reply; the oath settles between them anyway.

Maybe this is intentional. Maybe Edelgard does not care if he honours his word.

“You may also bring one person with you,” the boy suddenly remembers. “But only one, she said.”

Dimitri nods again. There is no doubt who she is going to take with her. “It would only be fair.”

*

Dimitri rides out two hours before sunset the next day. Felix comes with him: for better or worse, regardless of what either of them wants or does not want from their fate, there is no one else Dimitri would rather have near him in a moment like this.

They ride to the bend of the Dleri river until a marshy area forces them to search for a crossing; the silty, sluggish water flows too wide and deep to allow for a ford. They waste about an hour looking for a bridge undamaged enough to carry their horses’ weight, and eventually find a serviceable boat and settle on rowing across Dleri while the snorting mounts swim behind them. They make their way back to the road, slippery with a drizzling rain, and from there it is a straightforward ride to Hratka, and then to their meeting point.

South from the village sprawls a wide field of amaranth. Dimitri dismounts in the twilight and grabs a rope from the saddle to tie his horse’s reins to one of the red cedars making up the windbreak.

“I’m still pissed you’re unarmed,” Felix grouses from where he’s tying his own horse. He loosens the saddle girth a notch so the mare can graze - and while normally Dimitri would understand him keeping the girth tight and ready for riding, it is not like horses will save them anyway if things go wrong.

“I am aware,” Dimitri concedes and steps back as Felix shoulders past him to deal with his horse as well. “I still maintain that bringing a weapon would rather defeat the point of a parley.”

Dimitri spent the entire night and the day painstakingly preparing himself for this, trying to minimize their risks as much as possible until the twisting paths left sun-glare marks across his eyelids. They have already lost points by arriving late, though most of the times, Edelgard does wait. But he knows most definitely that a show of strength would not do them any favours. Besides - should a fight break out, there is nothing Dimitri can do against von Vestra with Areadbhar that he would not be able to do with his bare hands - the lance would only slow him down.

And technically, he is not entirely unarmed. The sheathed dagger is a sharp presence tucked into his belt.

Felix grunts noncommittally, and they walk into the field. Thick amaranth heads tap against Dimitri’s knees, cling to his cloak, leave smears of rainwater, as if protesting the invasion. In the thickening dusk he can still make out their blood-red colour even as the world turns grey. Their whispers rise all around them, coaxed into the air by rain and wind, and linger like those of a curious, watchful crowd.

Edelgard has chosen this place well, meant to intimidate - Dimitri can imagine how this sea of red would look in the sunset, spilling across land and sky alike, and feels a little bad that he ruined her timing by arriving so late. He wades through the dense, almost meaty cover, tension coiling tighter in him with every step.

They find Edelgard and von Vestra in the middle of the field, their shapes suddenly released by the heedless dark. Edelgard nods at her companion, and von Vestra lights a small fire in the palm of his hand. It crackles in the drizzle.

A show of goodwill, occupying his dominant hand with a commodity? Or a weapon on standby?

Usually the former, though Dimitri’s eyes are burning from the memory of his blinding magic. 

He and Felix melt out of the shadows like wary animals - Felix even more so than Dimitri: he had placed his right hand on one of the swords when they first stepped into the field and does not look like he intends to relax his grip anytime soon, oath or no oath.

Dimitri squares his shoulders, turns his head to look in front of himself.

She is here. This is a good sign. 

Edelgard and von Vestra are standing still as statues in the sighing sea of now-black amaranth, and the army of flowers remains unbroken behind them in the small circle of yellow light - Dimitri would not be surprised if they have simply Translocated right here, careful, vigilant, deliberate.

The tension pulls towards Dimitri’s core, twists into a knot and expands again, warming his limbs and making his jaws tingle. He has always met tasks of precision with a certain amount of resignation and dread, but this time - this time he must succeed. The balance has to be right.

“Well, well,” Edelgard speaks over the crackle of raindrops against the leaves. “It's been a long time, Dimitri.” She turns her head a fraction, her gaze shifts impassively to Dimitri’s right. “And hello to you too, Felix.”

Dimitri nods, the name spilling from his lips like water. “Edelgard.”

They talk. Well, he and Edelgard talk - von Vestra keeps posturing and glaring across the two of them to where Dimitri knows Felix to be, probably returning the favour.

He shuts them carefully out, focuses on Edelgard. If Felix notices something amiss, Dimitri will know. If Felix does not, there will not be much hope for Dimitri anyway. So he keeps his eye on Edelgard, feeling the imprint of every word she says - strangely and not strangely at all, her melodic cadence is still the same and, just as he had thought all these years ago, now she is leading an army with it.

But then again, so is he.

He understands her, in a sense. They are both striving for the same thing, in the end - for peace and a better, safer future for their people - but the paths leading to it could not be more different, burying them in semantics. And he knows that she sees it too, but the beasts of war are baying for blood, and time is running out, and it is altogether too late to change anything, and so Edelgard lifts her chin, and stares him down, and speaks, every sentence an axiom.

But Dimitri sees the paths branching out from her the moment she arrives back in Enbarr. Sees the dark, terrible magic twisting under her skin, sees her absent-minded caress against it, the sudden and firm grip. 

Sees, too, the way she falters when he hands her the sheathed dagger - von Vestra grows tense and bristling at the movement - sees the way her eyes unfocus for a moment as she takes it, their gloved hands never touching. He can almost _feel_ Felix fuming in the void, too - he has not warned him of this, and obviously Felix does not approve - but after the longest moment Edelgard exhales, and inclines her head, and lets the dagger hang from her lowered hand.

Dimitri follows the movement, an aborted swing of the pendulum. It feels like the beginning of a countdown. Edelgard looks at him, and she is not smiling - not doing anything, really - but if he desired to read something into her gaze, he would be tempted to call it sorrow.

And then the space before him cracks in two as magic shoots out in tense, icy needles, and Dimitri recoils on instinct, but in the next moment it dissipates - and the wave of amaranth stalks as they move back from their bent positions is all that is left behind after Edelgard and von Vestra Warp out of the field.

“Well,” Felix huffs in the sudden silence before the raindrops resume on their course; Dimitri hears Felix’s fingers flex on the hilt of his sword, now unsheathed. “We’re still alive, at least.”

Dimitri only hums in response, turning around; the void resolves itself into Felix’s shape. There is nothing left to do here.

“A bloody waste,” Felix mutters beside him; mud squelches as he takes a step, grinds his heel into it in faint anger. “Could’ve saved ourselves a trip in the rain.”

Dimitri is silent as he thinks it over. They still go to war, yes: as they crested a hill on their way here, they glimpsed the lights of Enbarr colouring the clouds in the distance, and this time tomorrow they will be fighting in its streets.

But Edelgard came here. She listened to what he had to say. She took the dagger.

Dimitri has now done everything he possibly could have. The rest is up to her - tomorrow - after they fight each other.

A shadow twists and froths above Enbarr, blotting out the sky.

They trudge back through the field, suddenly terribly tired. The bright tension that had kept Dimitri taut and sharp is punctured out of him, and it takes him all his effort just to keep moving. Mud and darkness have already reclaimed their footprints, and he has no doubt that the ones he is leaving behind are met with the same fate, but it does not matter. If Edelgard is so keen on not leaving a trace, they might as well do the same.

They ride back to the camp, the salt of the amaranth field dissolving into the wet night. THe rain ends.

Something is different, Dimitri realizes once they arrive. Most of his generals prefer to stay around their battalions and rely on messengers to communicate, but now he glimpses a blazing body of a bonfire near his own quarters, with people filling the seats on thick logs around it, each figure cut frontally in two by the orange glare. The sounds of conversations and laughter reach Dimitri’s ears, and a fast, rhythmic, boisterous clapping, and the smell of - is that heated wine? In _summer?_

“Oh flames,” Felix huffs as they dismount and hand off their horses to a waiting soldier, and Dimitri arches an eyebrow at him.

“You do not sound surprised,” he points out, voice lifting questioningly at the end.

“That’s because I’m not - Claude, he…” Felix flaps a hand in the direction of the gathering. “He complained along the lines of ‘missing out on the Fhirdiad celebrations’ or whatever, never mind that it was his fault in the first place.”

“I’m afraid I still do not follow,” Dimitri says with a frown.

“Your Highness! Felix!” Ingrid melts out of the crowd, coming to stand before them. “How was it?”

Dimitri shakes his head. “We fight.”

“Ah,” Ingrid stiffens for a second, pulls her shoulders back; her eyes go dull as she stares off into the middle distance. “Of course. I will let everyone know.”

“It was to be expected,” Felix grumbles. “So what exactly is going on there?”

Ingrid snaps out of her thoughts and her mouth turns up at the corners in an excited smile. “Oh, you have to see that! Claude is dancing with daggers. Would you like some wine? We bought some back at Nymede, actually, and it’s surprisingly decent.”

Dimitri is entirely too overheated for this. “Just water for me, I think, if there’s any,” he replies. “Thank you.”

Claude is, indeed, dancing with daggers - twisting and jumping in the air as he slices it with two long blades on every turn, falling to his knees and getting back up in the span of a moment, stabbing the daggers into the ground as he jumps up only to pick them up again next time he descends. He is a _whirlwind_ of movement - and as Dimitri sits down on a log with Felix on his right and they are offered tin mugs with water, people around them begin to clap faster, but Claude takes it easily in stride, the bonfire throwing licks of light on his sweaty skin, his grin only growing wider at the challenge.

Dimitri takes a moment to look around, picking out familiar faces. Almost all of his generals are here, save for Bernadetta and Linhardt, and he sees numerous officers too. A man he does not know by name but recognizes as an officer of Claude’s sits cross-legged between the fire and the circle of people, thumping at the war drum balanced on his crossed legs, but Dimitri cannot even distinguish its sounds over the clapping and the cheers.

Ingrid makes a round, leaning in to talk to people, and Dimitri does not need to hear her to know the word she is spreading. He watches shadows cross people’s faces as she does, but they are quickly licked clean off by the firelight as soon as she leaves. They were all expecting as much, it would seem.

Dimitri returns to watching Claude. To his left sits Hilda, and she looks at him for a long calculating moment before leaning over.

“It’s a traditional thing to do before a battle for people in Almyra,” she tells Dimitri. “A show of strength before your own people. Or, of course, you can do it on the frontline to intimidate the enemy at the same time.”

And it does look intimidating. A show of strength, yes - but also of perfect, unerring control and precision. The daggers fly through the air, glinting like fish or shooting stars, and land perfectly into Claude’s waiting hands even in this hurricane of a dance.

“Claude!” Sylvain’s voice rings out - Dimitri searches for him and can barely make out his shape, almost swallowed by the breaths of the bonfire. He holds a palm up with a small flame cradled in it and tilts his head at Claude with a question clear on his face.

Claude hacks out a laugh and nods with a grin, and Sylvain throws the flame at him.

Dimitri tenses involuntarily, heels digging into the ground, but Claude - catches the flame on one of the blades in an effortless motion right as he completes a turn, strikes the daggers against each other - and both are set on fire as he continues the dance, long blazing glares scorching the air in darting arcs of firebirds.

Sylvain gets up and saunters over, stopping a few paces away from Claude, body moving minutely to the beat, eyes tracking Claude’s movements. And then he snaps his fingers again, calling on flames of his own, and begins to dance as well, mimicking Claude almost perfectly.

No, not mimicking - the flow of his dance is similar to Claude’s, certainly, but where Claude’s is nothing but sharpness and clean-cut edges, there is an almost liquid fluidity to Sylvain’s, the soft crackling lines of sparks dissolving into the air behind him like silhouettes of other realities lit gently on fire. Dimitri has seen it before - Srengi fire art, sometimes enhanced with burning weights on long steel chains or blazing battle fans, but sometimes remaining just that, just a body and footsteps and skin to flames.

They are both mesmerizing. Some of the people forget to keep clapping as they watch their dance.

Eventually, Claude jumps high into the air and manages two full turns before coming down, stabbing the daggers into the ground and smothering the fire on their blades. He gets up with his arms spread and turns in an arc, bowing to the audience, and Sylvain puts out his own flames and does the same, waving his smoking but undamaged hands. They clasp each other’s upper arms and exchange words Dimitri does not catch over the applause, but after a few claps on the shoulders they part again and Sylvain returns to his spot next to Ingrid and gleefully shoves his sooty hands in her face. 

Claude, meanwhile, calls on another round of applause for his drummer, helping the man up from the ground, and then turns to look at Dimitri.

“Glad to see you back, Your Highness!” he shouts. “We were getting bored without you, so I decided to start a little something. What do you think?”

“It was very impressive,” Dimitri praises earnestly. “I wish we could have seen it from the start.”

“Ah well, who knows, maybe I’ll do another round later,” Claude bends down to tug the daggers out of the rumpled earth. People around the fire express their excitement at the prospect, and he looks at them pointedly when he gets back up. “Alright, everyone, I’m not gonna do all the work. You all know how this goes - time to show off!”

Ingrid and Sylvain get up and step closer to the fire - what, are they going to dance? sing? But no, they check up on a large cauldron at the edge of the burning logs - in the tumble of shadows, Dimitri mistook it for a mass of embers, but apparently that is the source of their warm spiced wine. Dimitri has been wondering where the tingling smell was coming from.

The Adrestian summer night is warm and dry, nothing like the humidity of the short heat waves in central Faerghus or the crispness of the Oghma Mountains. The heat of the bonfire is reaching Dimitri even though they are sitting in a wide circle far away from the flames, and he frankly cannot fathom why anyone would want to drink something hot on top of that.

Though maybe it is not about the warmth.

“Fe-lix,” Annette’s voice sounds to Dimitri’s right, and he turns his head until the void gains what little colour the night has to offer.

She is standing next to Felix, bent forwards to rest her hands on her knees, and the look on her face is outright devilish.

“What,” Felix deadpans, then catches himself. “Whatever it is, _no.”_

“But _Felix,_ imagine how much fun it’s gonna be!” Annette implores. “Come on, if we’re doing this whole last-night-before-the-final-battle thing, then we _have_ to give them a sea shanty!”

Dimitri almost chokes on his water and attempts to pass it off as a cough, but judging by Felix’s glare, he does not succeed.

“Annette, I am _not_ singing a sea shanty, not even for you,” Felix hisses.

Annette pouts in response, straightening up and clenching her fists. “But _please?_ People would _love_ that! Fraldarius has so many of those, I’m sure you know at least some! And then, when it’s all over, you can look back on tonight and think to yourself, ‘my, how glad I am that I listened to Annette and allowed myself to have fun’! Hm?” She looks closely, and a slow grin appears on her face. “And I’ll _help_ you.”

Felix rolls his eyes, and sighs, and uncrosses his legs, and crosses them again. Dimitri watches him in amusement - and so, sees the exact moment Felix gives in.

“You don’t even _know_ any of the lyrics,” he grumbles.

Annette must see it too, because she squeaks and throws her hands around his neck, squeezing him tightly. “Oh Felix, you are the _best!_ And come on, when has that ever stopped me?”

“Good p-oint.” Felix sounds a little choked up where his neck is bent at an uncomfortable angle from the hug, and a slitted eye finds Dimitri’s. “Not a word about this,” he warns, though his tone lacks heat.

Dimitri lifts his mug. “My lips are sealed, though does it matter when everyone is here already?”

“Oh, Seiros, don’t remind me,” Felix huffs and gets up. Annette, who is still clinging to his neck, gets briefly lifted off the ground, but quickly regains her footing and drags him off.

Felix ends up, indeed, singing a sea shanty - the one about the Sea Dragon and the Storm Maiden. 

He does so haltingly at first, throwing scathing looks over people’s heads. Unused, old words fall awkwardly from his mouth, molding it to their shape until even Dimitri can hear the Eastern Faerghan accent that he is normally deaf to. But Annette improvises the lyrics right along and tugs on Felix’s hands to uproot him from his spot and make him sway with her to the rhythm of the waves pressing against the ribs of the invisible ship, and he begins to settle into the the flow.

And slowly, very slowly Felix relaxes, the tension in him unwinding and fading like mist over water, and his rigid voice softens, and his confidence blooms again, a fierce and beautiful thing.

It is - downright adorable.

Marianne is sitting on Hilda’s other side, and halfway through the song Dimitri, to his belated surprise, notices her murmuring the words along.

Felix is smirking by the time the song ends despite all the grumbling he was doing before, although once it is over he glares people into ceasing their applause and wastes _no_ time on finding his way back to Dimitri. Sylvain wolf-whistles after him, and Felix throws up a middle finger without looking but only huffs at Dimitri’s bemused smile.

“Annette is impossible,” he grouches after sitting back down and picking up his mug again to hide his burning face in it.

“I would not know,” Dimitri muses, watching her hug a laughing Mercedes. “I think she is a good friend.”

Felix snorts into the mug.

The night goes on. Lorenz steps up to deliver what sounds like a three-hundred-verse poem about an ancient hero and monster slayer by the name of Raphima, a woman of noble blood rumoured to be a descendant of Saint Indech themself. That is when Leonie jumps to her feet and strides over and gets into a heated debate with Lorenz, because according to the version _she_ knows, Raphima was not a noblewoman but a commoner, hailing from a small fishing village on the Iah River in Gloucester. 

They end up aggressively declaring their takes on the story at each other while pretending not to find anything remotely odd about the situation, their respective accents growing thicker in their agitation until they are basically speaking different dialects altogether. 

With a muttered _‘oh, Goddess’,_ Hilda breaks them up by launching into _throat singing,_ of all things, and subsequently startling the two - as well as everyone else, Dimitri included - into a stunned silence. The melodic sounds she produces are, well, _throaty_ and trilling, and the flow of them rises and falls without any immediately discernible pattern, but from the other side of the bonfire, Lysithea’s voice reaches them, twining seamlessly around Hilda’s. 

The plains are spreading around them in all directions, and the wind carries the song away, but Dimitri imagines the echo of it reverberating and breathing in the sheer ravines and cliffs of the Ineroch Mountains in the east of the Alliance territory, and suddenly it makes sense.

The night stretches and curls around them like a great beast, stars glistening among the strands of its hide. The excitement swells and falls and swells again, settles into a milder flow when someone gets up to recite a poem, churns when the next person chooses to dance, words and melodies and movements stretching from all ends of the continent to twine into a plexus, here, on the eve of the final day. Dimitri does not volunteer to perform, and people are merciful enough to leave him alone when he refuses, but to watch everything is strangely soothing.

They are all in this. They all want the same thing.

Hours pass unnoticed, the short darkness of a summer night flaring and burning on both ends. They might regret this the following day, once they are under the walls of Enbarr on barely any sleep and little else - and they probably will. But right now, they need it.

Eventually, however, the bonfire dies down to a murmur again, and this time nobody feeds it. People talk quietly among themselves; slowly, more and more fall into a slumber as the blackness begins to throb with the not-so-distant promise of dawn.

Dimitri does not expect to sleep even as most people around him seem to have dozed off. He lets his eye unfocus as he wanders inwards, and comes back to with a blink when a hint of pink crosses his vision, muted to a shadow in the dark. Hilda coaxes a sleepy, bundled up Marianne from her seat and throws Dimitri a wink before leading her away from the embers of the fire.

Ingrid is dozing on Sylvain’s shoulder, and for a moment Dimitri thinks him to be asleep as well, but he blinks slowly as he stares at the embers, rubbing his bearded cheek against the crown of Ingrid’s head, mussing her hair.

Felix is sitting with his back straight and eyes half-lidded, in a meditative trance at least if not truly asleep. Dimitri takes care not to move so he does not startle him out of his rest by accident. He studies the sharp profile, the haphazard mess of his hair, the scars on his arms, bared to the southern warmth.

They cannot stay like this, of course. Soon, the night will end, and they will march - and by this time tomorrow, they will walk in a different world altogether, both those who do not survive and those who do. It feels unreal, and strange to think about, and a little bit scary - or maybe not a little.

But right now, he and Felix are sitting on this log before the dying bonfire as it expels warm breaths of air, under these impossible fist-sized stars of the south, and their knees are touching, and Dimitri is bizarrely happy. Just for a moment.

Just as he predicted, he does not sleep. The ghosts leave him alone for once, and still all Dimitri can do is sit quietly and will his body to relax. It is not much, but he has fought on less before. He will be fine.

As the air turns grey and the morning dew breaks out, two voices rise in the cotton-soft silence, clear and bright, a perfectly matched pair. Ferdinand and Dorothea stand tall with their backs to the embers, facing the birthmark of light in the east, and sing a battle song in old Adrestian with their voices pitched to carry across the plains. 

Dimitri does not speak the language outside of what memory he still has of the holy texts, but the plangent, solemn notes pull to the surface the memories of funeral songs, mourning in reverse while the Goddess makes her decision.

The seventh day of the Verdant Rain Moon dawns. The day they take Enbarr.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She is in there.
> 
> She is waiting.
> 
> They step inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs for this chapter:
> 
> \- heatstroke  
> \- injury  
> \- character death

_ “my general, but what if our foe is of seven heads, _

_ of seven shining crowns above starry towers?” _

_ and you whisper, “your highness, I will help you conquer your fear, _

_ for we will sculpt out our army even more fearsome” _

  
  


It is  _ hot  _ in Enbarr.

Aphelia’s assistance spared the mages a lot of their Translocation charges, and Dimitri ordered to use them to close the last of the distance to Enbarr, the army stepping out of the slowly congealing sunset right before the walls of the city.

That was hours ago. Now, they are fighting in the streets, and the air feels so hot and thick it blisters down Dimitri’s throat on every inhale. He is soaking right through his clothes and padded under armour garments, cooking in his own sweat, half a step away from heatstroke. His vision swims and almost, impossibly, doubles, but he tosses his damp hair out of his face and keeps fighting.

Dimitri has never been to Enbarr before. Almost regrets it now, wishing he could appreciate the monumental, opulent yet dignified beauty of it: the smooth marble tiles laid out in intricate patterns along the walkways, the dark spires of cypress trees against the darker bruising of the sky, the fountains and pools cascading down the levels of the city, the palace rising above all of it like a priceless jewel wreathed in lights.

But the marble is slippery where it is streaked with blood and littered with the soft insides of split pomegranates, and the burning cypresses are a treacherous smokescreen, and the pools are overflowing as more bodies are thrown into them to find their rest, and the jewel on top of the hill must be cracked, the darkness within it must be spilled.

Somebody gets too close, grabs at Dimitri’s cloak from behind in an attempt to throw him off-balance. Dimitri stabs blindly with the blunt end of Areadbhar, grunts when the pressure on his shoulders does not disappear, and undoes the heavy clasps to let the cloak fall. After that, it is a matter of a second to turn around and run the attacker through.

Dimitri leaves the cloak clutched in the dying man’s hands. It was only making him hotter.

Their army keeps pressing in, street by arduous street. Every time Dimitri chances a glance upwards, he sees another battle, the one waged in the sky, wyverns and pegasi locked in combat and making the air vibrate with their shrill cries. A shot wyvern almost falls on his head at some point, but he glimpses it happening quickly enough to avoid it, jerks his head at Felix to follow him.

They race against the flow of red-tinted water, up the wide, flat steps. There are not many people up here yet - most of the fighting is happening down below, he and Felix are deep in the enemy territory. But something dark is curdling inside the palace, darker than the descending night - something Dimitri fears he already knows but does not look closely enough yet to find out for sure - and the urgency is pushing him forward, and Felix keeps up with his every step.

They find themselves on the square before the palace’s main entrance. This must be it, at least - the grandiose doors, the golden mosaic, the huge stone carvings of eagles and rams guarding the portico.

Though the guardian Dimitri is supposed to fight here is not nearly as conspicuous.

Where is he?

Dimitri whirls in place, Aredbhar buzzing in his hands, eye darting from one statue to the next, over the fountains and flowerbeds and the carefully sculpted hedges. Felix steps away to give them both space and stays on high alert as well; he has put Aegis on his back, and Thoron already crackles around the knuckles of his freed hand, throwing slashes of light on his chest and face.

Dimitri’s mind is racing, burning his aching skull. Usually - usually von Vestra has enough time to get the first hit in, and that betrays his position - where? Then he attempts another spell as Dimitri closes the distance and turns the fight to his advantage, bone bites into stone, then cloth, then flesh, so where?  _ where? _ The portico?

No. No, something is wrong about this. Dimitri is not von Vestra’s priority, not while he stays out of the range of Areadbhar. Von Vestra attacks him even though Dimitri is not the prime target when he is  _ the only  _ target. 

Dimitri turns around, eye wide - and a wave of sound rises out of nowhere, a terrible, terrifying crashing tide that reverberates in his bones, rattles and knots every fibre of his body - it sounds like many people shouting in the distance, and the thundering of thousands of horses, and the wind roaring high up in the mountains, but it is  _ right here, _ it is too impossibly close, and the base of Dimitri’s skull cools at its ominous hissing even despite the heat.

_ ‘Death whistles,’ _ he thinks blearily through the whooshing sound clogging up his ears. It must be the death whistles. 

The mounts cry out overhead, affected by the noise, adding to the distraction.

_ The distraction. _

When Dimitri is not the only target…

Dimitri forces his eye open - when did he close it? - and turns again, just in time to see a torrent of purple and octarine hit Felix in the face. The  _ smell _ of it is rank and so distinctive that Dimitri’s eyes ache in sympathy. 

A blinding spell. 

“Fuck!” Felix screams, shaking his head so furiously he nearly falls.  _ “Fuck!” _

Felix’s lightning goes off, but he is striking at random, and the bolt hits a flowerbed a few paces away, showering them in charred dirt.

Felix is hit - Felix is  _ blinded -  _ but Dimitri has no time to help: the sharp stab of the spell has revealed von Vestra’s hiding place and it is, indeed, the palace’s portico.

“Felix!” Dimitri yells anyway even as he already charges at von Vestra, Areadbhar’s grin flaring at his shoulder.

“I’m fine, get  _ him!” _

Dimitri only has time to think if this is how Felix felt at Gronder before he crosses the short distance to von Vestra, the mosaic ground pounding against the soles of his feet in a nauseating blur.

Von Vestra shoots another spell, ducks behind a rearing ram that is taller than either of them. He is smart: in the narrow space between the statues and the wall, Dimitri will not be able to swing freely. Closing the distance does not bring him the advantage it normally would.

Von Vestra weaves around the statues, firing off spell after spell - the veins on his hands are a dark purple, pulsating and thick. Dimitri makes a short swing, cuts a marble eagle in two, raising a cloud of dust, but von Vestra avoids the falling stones, shoots a spell that only narrowly misses Dimitri’s shoulder. Von Vestra has no time - if Felix is alright, sooner or later he will join the fight and they will box him in. His only chance is to take Dimitri out while Felix is indisposed.

But Dimitri cannot allow that, and he crushes statue after statue, and in that marble cemetery von Vestra finally trips over an eagle’s shattered wing, and his focus slips from Dimitri for just a moment, and Dimitri does not waste his chance. Areadbhar finds its way easily to the unarmoured flesh.

Dimitri watches as von Vestra dies, speared by his lance. He does not wish to - wants to allow the man this final dignity. But he cannot afford even the slightest risk. And so he watches as his veiny hands slip from the shaft of the lance, and his face, twisted into something urgent and yearning, smoothes out, and his eyes dart towards the doors of the palace before finally dimming.

Dimitri looks away then. Carefully lowers the lance until it is no longer weighed down. 

Felix appears between two pillars, places an unsteady hand over the crack in one of them. Surveys the scene, gives Dimitri a tight nod.

“Are you alright?” Dimitri asks.

Felix’s snarl is a crooked, brutal thing. He wipes his lips - an empty vial is clenched in his fist. “Is he dead,” he grits out.

His eyes are red and streaming irritated tears, but he still tracks Dimitri, still glances around him because  _ this place is still dangerous,  _ so the blindness has left him, at least.

Now, on to less important things.

“He is dead,” Dimitri confirms.

“Awesome,” Felix presses the heel of his hand against his forehead, obviously fighting the urge to rub at his eyes. “This shit is  _ vile.” _

Dimitri remembers that feeling.

“What now?” Felix asks.

Soldiers are streaming into the square now, carrying numerous torches - Dimitri gives them a quick glance, just enough to recognize the colours, and relaxes his grip on Areadbhar a fraction.

He turns his head to look at the doors. Edelgard’s last line of defence has fallen. Only the palace remains - an enormous thing, undoubtedly filled to the brim with her people - but its side is already punctured. Its most ferocious guard dog is dead.

This is it. This is  _ it. _

His head, no, his whole  _ body _ suddenly feels too light, pushed up into the air with every pulse of his frenzied blood as it churns faster and faster, almost stuttering over itself in its haste.

Hilda’s fliers touch down and dismount: the battle in the sky seems to be nearing its end, and Ingrid and Claude are holding their own. Sylvain’s cavalry dismounts as well, switching out lances for swords. They have agreed upon this earlier, and Dimitri nods his approval: together with Annette’s and Lysithea’s mages, they now have enough close-quarter combatants to take the palace while the rest subdue the open space of the city. 

It takes them little time to tear the heavy doors off the hinges with the help of Sylvain’s linked horses, even less to take out the guard on the other side of them. The path is clear. It is time.

Dimitri turns to Felix, finds him already watching him back. His hair is windswept, a few strands sticking to his sweaty forehead, his clothes are bruised with dirt and blood, but his face, his fire is wilder still.

Tumultuous, tempestuous, untamed. Always here. Until the end.

“Are you afraid?” Felix asks.

Dimitri looks closer, looks at the flames melting the amber of his reddened eyes. Listens to his heart, thundering in his throat. Swallows.

Something awaits them in there - something lurching and abhorrent, a beast driven to mindlessness in its anguish. He has seen its face enough times in the possible futures, in his dreams, in the intrusive shadows lurking in his head.

Whatever they meet - if that creature  _ is  _ Edelgard…Dimitri knows what he saw in his visions, knows that Edelgard is lost, and desperate, and hopeful - and yet…

He could never lie to Felix. For all the times that Felix screamed his offence at Dimitri’s dishonesty, Dimitri could never lie, even when he could bring himself to try.

He jerks his head in a nod. “Yes.” Then, before he loses his courage to ask, “Will you be by my side?”

Dimitri hears a squeal of leather as Felix adjusts his grip on the handles of Aegis, bringing it into position. The shield hums to life, a brilliant carapace of gold.

That is all the answer Dimitri needs. As one, they turn to face the entrance once again.

She is in there.

She is waiting.

They step inside.

Dimitri expected the palace to be cooler but somehow it is even worse. It feels like stepping into a slowly waking volcano, a beast’s humid throat, the air simmering and tingling against his burning skin, running its fingers through his sweat-soaked hair. He presses on and fights, unheeding, because every step that he manages to take brings him much closer to putting an end to all of this. And so he must continue.

It is a straight way through the palace to the throne room. The doors are barred, but Annette tells everyone to step back and commands her battalion, and the doors explode in a burst of molten metal.

If the palace was simmering, the throne room is  _ boiling. _ Dimitri almost reels back from the thick wave of scorching air but pushes in against it. He lifts an involuntary hand to shield his face from the heat, but it crawls and seeps and oozes into his armour like a swarm of parasites, burrowing into his flesh. His glove is torn, and the small patch of unscarred skin on his palm looks almost white against the dark leather.

Dimitri swallows. His head is swimming. This heat is too much, he is not - he is not feeling well.

He needs to see this through.

A shadow threads Dimitri’s fingers, and he lowers his hand, willing his eye to focus. The tangled chaos of his visions solidifies into a shape that towers at the end of the throne room, spaces between its spidery limbs pierced by the orange light of the fires streaming through the tinted window behind it. The shape shifts and undulates in a slow, grotesque dance, every breath unrolling from the barrel-like chest the size of a wheelbarrow all the way to the gnarly serrated claws.

There is no surprise in Dimitri at the sight, no hot fear swelling inside like a sickness. Only recognition. He has seen it -  _ her _ \- enough times in his visions already, the abhorrent amalgam of Edelgard the Emperor and Edelgard the Beast. This only feels like a heart finally shuddering to a stop after too many irregular beats.

His own stutters, too.

There are other people inside - mages, all of them - but Dimitri can only stand there as the others rush in past him and engage the enemies, can only watch as Edelgard opens her mouth and lets out an ear-splitting scream.

It hits him like another wave, crashes into his pounding head, and he nearly throws up as the meat hook of pain tears through his brain and down, splitting his chest and stomach open - but the pain kicks him into action, too, and he grips Areadbhar tighter and runs.

The sounds of fighting fall away, drowned in the thundering rush of blood in Dimitri’s ears, of its pulses pressing up against his skin, melting into the floor with every footstep. He is flying forwards, the wing of Areadbhar stretching and straining above him, and the walls are closing in.

Somebody tries to stand in his way. Dimitri does not even turn to look at them as he cuts them down. Edelgard rises before him in a sinuous twist, takes a swing with an arm so long that the movement feels slow as it cuts through the air. She is still so far away Dimitri cannot make out her face - her  _ eyes _ \- but the arm is coming closer, descending upon him in a wide arc.

Dimitri ducks and rolls, and the arm cracks the floor - black marble, grey veins, chips flying up in flakes of dried blood - and the creature wails in wrath, its limbs convulsing. Dimitri slashes at the arm, and Areadbhar cuts easily through its sinewy coil. Edelgard screams again, and she sounds closer now. Something warm is dripping from Dimitri’s ears, but his skin feels hotter still.

He keeps running, jumps and skids to avoid her attacks, bites into the strange black flesh with his lance when it comes too close. His bones rattle and whine from the times he fails to evade the swings. 

This is not Edelgard’s body, this is something else, something evil and  _ wrong _ growing out of her, encasing her, and the air is rank and vile, steeped with Dark magic - but she is not casting it, she  _ is _ Dark magic.

In many of his visions, they fight bone to bone, but Dimitri does not see Aymr - cannot imagine this creature wielding it. It need no weapons, it  _ is _ the weapon, a feeling Dimitri knows all too well.

He presses on. He sees her face now, a frozen, dead mask of fury and fear on a great colossus grinding its bones together with each torturous movement.

She is dying, Dimitri suddenly realizes. Whatever this is, she is killing herself with it.

Oh Edelgard, what is she  _ doing? _ Does she truly fear the future so much?

His heart seizes in his ribcage with piercing and unthinkable  _ pity _ even as he cuts off another clawed limb that she throws at him, but she would not want his pity. A viciousness grips him instead as he slices through the serpentine muscle. How does he stop this? What can save her here?

Red circles adorn her like a necklace of burning craters - they look so much like Areadbhar’s blood-crazed eye - like Crest stones.

If Dimitri could break them…?

The creature spreads its arms - Goddess, there are so many still - and its heavy body hovers in the air. Some of the limbs slam into the floor, easily piercing the slabs of marble, shimmering and shifting as they crack the stone into spiderwebs. Its face is full of hatred, and it unhinges its jaw and screams again.

Dimitri drops Areadbhar and sinks to the ground, covering his ears, an answering scream wrenched bloodily out of his throat. He heaves at the tail of it, dizzied and disoriented, almost not knowing which way is up. The sweat-soaked clothes under his armour are cooling against his skin - he does not seem to be sweating anymore, which must be - must be - a good sign. That must be a good sign.

Lightning snaps above Dimitri, bringing the smell of thunderclouds; the booming echo cracks against his abused ears. The creature screams once more, but not to maim - Edelgard is crying out in pain.

Felix is standing ahead of Dimitri. “Get up!” he yells. His ears are bleeding too, and he is so deathly pale.

Dimitri grasps Areadbhar and forces himself upright. Forces himself to breathe. Forces himself forwards.

The stones. He must reach the stones.

There are six of them, like a flaming chain of pustules on Edelgard’s shoulders and chest - close to the snapping jaws, close to the screaming mouth. But there is no other way.

Another lightning stretches above Dimitri’s head, hitting Edelgard in the abdomen, and she convulses and screeches but stays upright even as some of the scuttling limbs stagger and buckle, forcing the others to take up the weight. The stones only flare brighter: magic will not harm them, it never does, no matter what is thrown at her.

Well, then.

Dimitri presses on, tearing his body through the thick suffocating air, and another scream pierces him down to the marrow and trips him up, but he guides the fall into the next step. There is a tremor in his hands - or it might be the vibrations traveling up from the floor, or perhaps Areadbhar shivering in anticipation as its twisted brethren grows nearer.

Dimitri flings himself up the stars to the raised platform where the throne must have been. The limbs chase him, closing in like a Magdian flytrap, but Dimitri is faster, and though they are many-jointed, they still struggle to bend inwards swiftly enough.

Dimitri takes a wild swing at the limbs holding Edelgard up, and her body tumbles to the floor in a mess of rubbery coils and jutting joints. Dimitri rushes the last few steps and twists Areadbhar in his grip, slamming the bony tip down at one of the shoulder stones. It splinters in a flash of crimson, and the creature wails and thrashes, a stray limb ramming into Dimitri’s right hip. He staggers sideways, clenches the lance in his shaking hands, and swings again. A second stone bursts and dies, and a chip of it cuts through Edelgard’s scaly cheek.

She shrieks, and Dimitri catches sight of the chip glinting in her mouth before the pain forces his eye shut.

Breath catches in Dimitri’s throat and his heart lurches as his every nerve is set on fire. His right leg buckles under him, the bend of his armour is slick and shiny - the claw must have pierced it.

Dimitri’s heart is knocking against his ribs, pushes into his laboured lungs with such insistence that they struggle to expand. The visions blur and darken, twisting into violent shapes. Goddess, he is going to die. He is going to die here.

Areadbhar is so terribly heavy. 

Dimitri’s remaining breaths are punched out of him in irregular huffs, and he drags his leg back into position, grips the blood-slicked shaft of the lance. Edelgard shudders and hisses and scrambles, limbs lifting her up only to drop her down again, but she is slowly righting herself. Black blood gushes from the cut in her cheek, dark fumes weave up into the air.

She is going to turn her head and remember him there. She is going to strike, but Dimitri’s hands are so, so slow.

Edelgard bares her long sharp teeth, rows of them like bristles in a deep sea fish’s mouth, and Dimitri already feels them tearing into him and shredding his skin - but a flash of lightning snaps between them, hitting Edelgard in the shoulder, knocking her off balance.

Dimitri hears the sounds of fighting behind him. Does not have the time to look back. If Felix was too slow to counter a blow just to provide Dimitri with a distraction…

With a roar, Dimitri lifts Areadbhar and cuts into the third stone on an upwards swing. Edelgard staggers back yowling, leans on her limbs and propels herself back towards him, a long arm knocking into Dimitri’s fingers and wrenching Areadbhar out of his grip. The lance’s path is swallowed by the skittering limbs, its clatter somewhere nearby trodden over by the sounds of the battle raging around them.

Dimitri presses in before he can allow himself to think. The stones are held in place by vine-like sinews, black and pulsating, and they are the perfect size for Dimitri to close his fist around.

The spell in the gauntlets surges at his command, and his fingers curl in a vise around the fourth stone and pull, ripping it out of its nest. Dimitri angles the tips of his fingers and digs them into the stone until it breaks, releasing wisps of darkness into the spoiled air.

A new discharge of pain shoots up Dimitri’s left arm and into his chest, weaves itself into the agonizing pattern that is threading his body together.

The creature convulses and shakes, lets out cries that are terribly human-like. The limbs curl in on themselves as if seeking protection, and one of them wraps its many-jointed coil around Dimitri’s right arm and tightens. Dimitri jerks away so hard that the motion pulls at his arm socket, but the coil does not budge, pressing and pressing until the pauldron dents into his flesh and his bones grind together, wringing a cry out of him.

Dimitri shakes in Edelgard’s spasming hold and is forced to his knees when the limb jerks towards the floor. The impact leaves him light-headed and stupid, and he grasps onto the slithering black vines for support. Another limb lashes out, smashing against Dimitri’s thigh, and he tips forwards, his balance wrenched from him.

Only two stones left. The ones closest to the head.

The carcass rises and falls under Dimitri’s hand like a wave, and he clenches his fingers into the tattered matter and pulls himself closer, struggling against the trap around his right arm. Edelgard shivers, coiling her limbs tighter and tighter together like a dying spider, and alarm flashes across her gaunt face, her void-like eyes when she suddenly sees Dimitri so close.

He does not leave her time to react, plunging his hand into the vines around the fifth stone, tearing the ligaments apart as he grips the stone and crushes it in his fist.

Edelgard howls, outraged, agonized. Eyes flash a terrified lavender and drown in black again as she shudders against Dimitri and slices through the air in a movement that is too fast to perceive - but in the next moment, pain blooms violently between Dimitri’s right shoulder and neck as the gorget caves in under the creature’s gnashing teeth, squeezing his flesh. The creature snarls and writhes, burrowing deeper, and with a grinding, squealing sound the teeth pierce the armour and the padding and dig into the skin.

A screech tears out of its throat right into Dimitri’s ear, and the teeth close tighter, and the limb still holding his right arm tenses further, and there is no pain more than this, there is nothing beyond this all-encompassing agony, and Dimitri’s very  _ blood _ is blazing and scorching through his body and out where the creature is breaking the parchment seals of his skin. 

Dimitri hangs in the creature’s grip, in its jaws as his legs give out, and it digs fervently deeper, shreds and flays him like prey, more limbs freeing themselves from the cracked marble, winding to wrap around both of them, pressing them tighter together.

Dimitri would gasp, but there is no air left. There is only the heat, and the pain, and the seething darkness pressing insistently from the edges.

He gropes blindly with his free hand, pushes it into the tight space between their chests - but he cannot see, and he does not  _ feel _ anything, he does not know where to search.

The creature will kill him faster.

The limbs are cocooning them now, the spaces between them growing smaller. The darkness swells, inky and shifting, and Dimitri can feel his blood spilling and feeding it.

But it is not over yet - that path has not yet been suffocated to death. If only he…

Dimitri strains and reaches deeper, plates of his gauntlets catching in the negative space between his chestplate and the elastic ligaments. His Crest stutters and flares, but he can feel his strength vaning. The creature growls and crushes him against its taut skin, forcing the last of air out of Dimitri’s lungs. He tries to kick, but the serpentine limbs coil around his legs as well in greedy, rippling twists.

His hand stops against an obstacle, an uneven thing nudging at his fingers - his arm can move no further, whatever it is. There is nothing else left to do, so Dimitri plunges his fingers into the sinews and squeezes, the gauntlet spell pulling the last of the strength from his Crest.

...Something gives. Red light spills in the narrow space.

Enveloped in the creature’s shuddering hold, Dimitri can do nothing to shield himself when it lets out a deafening scream, the spears of it threading through his skull, his throat, his chest. It sounds like its entire body is screaming, the limbs convulsing and squeezing Dimitri harder with every broken hitch in the inhuman voice, until…

Until their grip weakens, and Dimitri’s feet touch the ground again - but they cannot hold his weight, and he sinks to the floor as the monstrous, twitching limbs begin to dissipate into the stifling air.

The teeth retract from his shoulders. The bulk of the creature falls away, a body hits the ground.

Dimitri feels hot all over. When he looks numbly down at his hands, the visible skin is red and dry. His heart is tripping over itself, a small agonized creature throwing its body against the cage of his ribs.

His head is throbbing with the aftershocks of the screams. There is a steady hum in his ears - the only thing he can hear.

A splash of red touches his field of view, and Dimitri lifts his eye to follow its path. 

It is Edelgard’s dress. Tendrils of black smoke curl away from her and into the air. She is lying prone, but already bringing her hands underneath herself.

A glint of something on the left catches Dimitri’s attention - Areadbhar lies pale against the dark floor, a dull gleam in its eye. Dimitri stretches towards it so far he almost feels like tearing, uses the shaft of the lance to push himself upright. His hands are shaking.

He still cannot hear anything but the hum in his skull. He wonders if this is going to be permanent - if this is another thread severed, trapping him deeper in this damaged, lumbering body.

If this is going to matter.

The visions churn around the two of them, realities where they are still fighting, or dying, or dead. They are growing paler already, fading, and Dimitri observes the paths that stretch out from this moment forwards.

He does not know what is happening behind him. Sometimes, the battle is not over yet, and somebody gets to strike him down. Sometimes, his friends are dead, sometimes…

Edelgard has shifted herself into a sitting position now, her hands folded in her lap, but the shivers betray their casual gesture. She tilts her head up - slowly - searches Dimitri’s face. The scales have disappeared along with everything else, leaving her pale skin smeared with dirt and sweat and blood.

Dimitri lets Areadbhar hang in his left hand, sways where he is standing but keeps his footing. His bruised legs lock themselves upright. Blood from his shredded shoulder is melting into the viscous air.

He used to hate Edelgard. He does not know how he feels about her anymore. But he sees the future - the very possible future that unfurls when she takes his hand - and it tints her slumped silhouette a hesitant gold in a promise of - acceptance, eventually. Possibly even grudging friendship, many years down the line.

There is so much they need to do - but Dimitri is looking forward to the hard work. He has never known anything else, and how  _ sweet _ it feels, the possibility of building instead of destroying.

Yes. There is hope. Despite everything, amidst everything, there is hope.

It can happen. It can come to be. It begins here.

Dimitri extends his right hand. His forearm and elbow are throbbing in simmering fire, but he keeps the arm hovering in the air. He must. This is the most important thing.

“El.”

Edelgard looks at his hand, shifts her gaze back to his face, still dazed from the fight. Her hands are moving, but Dimitri does not look away from her eyes. 

The hum in his ears unravels into something more faceted, voices weaving into each other, their words almost - but not quite - recognizable. The ghosts are ringing them, watchful and sharp.

_ ‘Please,’ _ Dimitri thinks.  _ ‘Please take it.’ _

_ ‘I am tired of fighting.’ _

They tremble before each other, mournful and silent. The dead are howling around them. The world teeters on the edge of a knife.

Edelgard goes for the dagger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :")  
> when will you learn (c)
> 
> this chapter is also known as "this is what happens when i describe Hegegard without actually remembering what Hegegard looks like"


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so! The once-a-week posting schedule was there mostly for the purpose of giving me time to draw the illustrations and make some final edits, but as thesis and other projects began to obliterate me I came to the decision to shake things up a bit. 
> 
> By which I mean that from now on there will be no illustrations until the very last installment, but in exchange I am dropping the rest of the fic at once :) Enjoy, and thank you for following along, it means the world to me.

_and he told me, “listen, my love,_

_i’ve been fighting in this war for too long._

_when you all drink this wine of yours,_

_i taste blood on the roof of my mouth”_

“You _will_ tell me if your condition changes for the worse, won’t you,” Mercedes asks, and it does not sound like a question at all.

Dimitri replies anyway. “Of course.”

Healers fret over him like he is breakable - like he is already broken. The tears and the shattered bones have been painstakingly mended back together, and the heatstroke has been banished from this blood, but Dimitri’s body is still covered in gauze and lathered in all kinds of salves that seep into his clothes like embalming fluids. Still so terribly tired and stretched so thin. His headache is a river swollen too thick to be contained within its bed, slow and sluggish where it covers the fields of his mind in a leisurely stretch.

They keep asking him after his left arm, too - though the stab right above the armpit was a clean one, nothing like the shredded mess of his right shoulder, it must have nicked something it should not have, leaving his left arm numb. He can still move it somewhat, and the range of motion looks promising when he is allowed out of the sling for checkups, yet the feeling is gone, at least for the time being. But everyone around him seems to worry an awful lot about it, and by now Dimitri is too sheepish to admit that it has been a decade since he last had full feeling in his hands anyway.

With a final onceover, Mercedes steps out of his personal space, wiping her hands on a cloth. “I’m still concerned about you flying so soon,” she frowns.

Dimitri looks at the dark circles under her downcast eyes, the bloodied cuff of her sleeve. Barely a few days have passed since the official capitulation of Enbarr, since - since Edelgard’s death, but it feels like months because of how busy all of them have been since then. There is the usual paperwork of assessing the army’s state, the legwork of replenishing supplies, the healing of the living and the burning of the dead. 

And _then_ there are the hastily thrown together delegations, and the meetings, and the messenger birds, and the politicking, and everything else that apparently comes with conquering an entire country. A strange pretense at normalcy, inviting nobles to a business dinner amidst a half-ruined palace of their dead liege, watching them sit next to their former fellow nobles, those who flocked to Dimitri’s side.

Not to mention the riots, of course. Which are not as numerous as they could be, but Dimitri is not Cornelia, will not turn the army on civilians. Which means negotiations, and endless public speaking, and riding the furious, shaking wave of people’s anger and fear and praying not to be pulled under its crushing weight.

The mood did shift somewhat after Dimitri stressed that he did not, in fact, intend to torch Enbarr or fill the torture chambers with those sowing dissent, as was apparently expected of him by the majority of the citizens. He was horrified and bewildered at the notion until an image of Cornelia’s face appeared in his mind and he gained a sickening sort of understanding. The mood shifted further still when he announced his lack of intention to disrespect their fallen Emperor’s corpse.

So - some are mollified. Not all, of course - they know that Dimitri is still a murderer and an intruder, though there is now a very persistent rumour - likely Claude’s doing - that Edelgard has unleashed a Demonic Beast inside the palace.

In the end, all of this drains him faster than any physical battle could, would likely drain him just as swiftly even if he were at full health.

Dimitri spent the first two days in the infirmary, slipping in and out of delirious consciousness as the healing magic worked its course, but the moment he could sit up it was an unending parade of messengers begging for his attention, and as soon as he could stand he used this chance to trade the cot for the saddle, which at least keeps him upright and mobile when he steps out of the palace.

He considers pointing out to Mercedes that a pegasus saddle is not that different from a regular one, but something tells him she will not accept this as an argument.

But fly he must. Though Dimitri is torn about leaving Enbarr so soon, in such a precarious state, Fhirdiad needs him, Faerghus needs him. Part of the Faerghan army will be staying to ensure peace - albeit even the phrasing alone grates on Dimitri’s nerves, perverses the very _idea_ of peace - but few things can proceed properly before he is crowned.

As King of Faerghus for now, of course. Fódlan will not be united as a country just yet - there is still too much to be done in order for that to happen, too many stitches to pull and tighten.

But it is no secret for anyone that Dimitri is likely going to be crowned the moment he touches ground in Fhirdiad - many already slip up in their honorifics when addressing him, their gazes pulled towards the future. Claude has been absent ever since the battle had ended, but Dimitri does not doubt that he will hunt him down with the Leicesteri scroll the moment he can. 

His Adrestian generals, freshly appointed as Ministers in place of their loyalist parents, wasted no time in swearing fealty - ‘in advance’, as Ferdinand had put it, to showcase their support of him and set an example for the nobles on Edelgard’s side, who have been under house arrest since her defeat. They are speeding everything up as much as possible, which is probably only fair, as with the amount of work lying ahead of everyone, Dimitri doubts that all of them will have the time to go to Fhirdiad so soon.

Sylvain ambushes Dimitri as soon as he enters the room that must have been used to hold council - this is what _they_ use it for these days, at least. Some of the generals are staying in the palace as well, and everybody’s rooms are clustered close together for safety, so it is not a long trek from Dimitri’s temporary quarters - an uncomfortably luxurious, gilded guest suite, heavily guarded despite Dimitri’s strong suggestion that the soldiers could be better used elsewhere. Or just allowed to rest, instead of guarding him in a meticulously cleared out and magic-proofed wing of the palace.

It is a short trek - and yet he is exhausted by the time he arrives. Riding a horse indoors becomes a very tempting thought at times like this, though still utterly unacceptable.

“Your Highness, there you are,” Sylvain straightens up from where he has been leaning against the edge of the massive table. “We were wondering when you’d be back.”

The table is made of ebony, sleek and imposing and free of adornments. The palace is truly so strange, such a paradoxical amalgam of Adrestian lavishness and what must have been Edelgard’s stern touch.

Dimitri’s throat closes. He forces a breath through it.

There is a handful of other people in the room: Ferdinand is talking to a few of his officers, and Lorenz is hunched listlessly over a pile of papers, turning now and then to mutter something to a scribe. A woman standing next to Sylvain shakes her head briefly when he looks away from her, as if snapping out of a trance, and looks down at a tablet in her hands with a frown.

A couple of steps away from the two, Felix is talking to a messenger and using another soldier’s back to rest a sheet of paper on as he scribbles, dipping the quill in the inkpot held in the man’s awkwardly bent hand. The man is tall, folded almost in half to accommodate Felix’s height.

The table is _right there._

“Mercedes wished to check up on me,” Dimitri replies. Which is not a secret and far from the first time it happened, so Sylvain’s comment is unwarranted, though Dimitri will not tell him so. His head is pounding. “How is it going?”

Dimitri walks over to the small group as he speaks. Felix hisses and mutters under his breath and takes a step away, jostling his unfortunate bookrest into a new position so he does not have to stop writing.

“Ah yes, I was just about done with the lovely Eridia here,” Sylvain flashes a smile at the soldier, making her turn red. “The routes are secure. We’re at no risk of starving, which is great news as far as I’m concerned. The city has quite a lot stored away, but you never know how much of it is actually useful until…”

“Flames, will you finally shut up?” Felix barks; his voice is a stab to Dimitri’s brain. “If I have to redo all of this because of you I swear to _fuck…”_ He moves as if to jab the quill into the paper but remembers himself just in time and saves the pen from smashing against the plating of the soldier’s armour. His glare darkens further, impotent, before he turns it back to whatever he is writing. Dimitri can almost hear him grind his teeth together.

“Felix is doing the numbers on how much we’re going to owe the Alliance nobles after all this,” Sylvain explains and leans out of the way as Felix kicks out blindly at him. “The conversion rates are driving him up the wall.”

“Four, _four currencies,”_ Felix snaps at them over his shoulder, with the manic glint of a man plagued by mathematics. “I’m almost done, but if I _ever_ have to convert Adrestian aurous into Leicesteri dram into Faerghan crown _with interest_ again, I will stab something. I will stab _you.”_

Dimitri feels the corners of his lips twitch upwards despite his vague aimless irritation, despite even the suffocating coil of grief, and raises an eyebrow instead. “What is the fourth one?”  
  


“The _fódlans,”_ Felix spits the word as if it has personally offended him. “Adrestians got busy with the Church, apparently. Don’t ask me, how or why. I already had to dig into Edelgard’s ledgers for references, which was bloody useless because half of them are very annoyingly encrypted.”

“Hey, do you mind if I have a look at those ledgers? Especially the encrypted ones.” Claude emerges from the void right next to them - if not for the casual air of the people around Dimitri, he would have been startled. Claude gives him a short bow that feels only half-joking. “Your Kingliness.”

“Claude,” he says. “I have not seen you around.”

He is keeping the door in his field of vision now - foolish, really, that he forgot to do that in the first place, got too distracted - and that is why he notices this time when another person steps through it.

It is Byleth, and they look - paler than usual. Exhausted. Golden needles spread out from around their head in a shimmering array.

Dimitri blinks. The halo disappears.

“Yeah - I got _really_ busy with something,” Claude responds, which is not much as far as answers go. They have all been busy. “Anyway - ledgers?”

“Why do you need them?” Dimitri asks.

An odd emotion clouds Claude’s face for a moment before he smiles again. “Only to confirm what I think I already knew since Derdriu.” He cranes his neck to look behind Dimitri. “Lorenz, Ferdinand? If you could dismiss your men. There’s something you need to hear.”

Felix and Sylvain get the hint and send their people away as well, but not before Felix can dry his writings with a hastily offered blotter.

Claude and Byleth look at each other; a silent conversation passes between them, and Claude shrugs and begins to speak.

It turns out that Rhea was found the night of the capitulation, in the dungeons beneath the palace. Seteth - who by then expected for her to be discovered there and flew out of Garreg Mach in advance - arrived the next day on a wyvern and left with Rhea, but not before she could converse with Byleth and, apparently, make them into the new Archbishop of the Church of Seiros.

Dimitri finds himself nodding along even as Felix’s eyes snap to Byleth so sharply that he half-expects them to roll right out of their sockets. His confusion is understandable - from what Dimitri knows, Byleth has never really expressed any affinity for the Church nor even particular devoutness.

But the golden needles suddenly make sense.

A very, very old memory catches on them like soft sparks of dandelion fluff on a shivering spiderweb. Not a true memory, but rather a memory of a vision he once had, a naive child glimpsing an easy path into the future right before he ruined all his chances at walking it.

Byleth is going to crown him. Not now - later.

But that is not all of it. Dimitri resurfaces from his thoughts and listens as Claude talks about von Vestra’s letter he had found among his things - a letter that was addressed to Claude, for von Vestra carried his mistrust of Dimitri into his grave - or guessed that Claude would be far more likely to rummage through his things. The letter apparently contained information on the remnants of an ancient civilization residing underground in Hrym territory, pointers on where to look, which books to dig through, what to watch out for. 

Claude talks of impostors wearing other people’s skins and hoarding their memories, of Nemesis and dragon children and the battles of long, long ago. Words are spilling out of him in an unending torrent that has been held back for too long, his research in Enbarr and Derdriu coming together into a grotesque, menacing shape, a festering corpse unearthed from under a pile of half-rotten leaves.

All of them are listening intently, equal parts disgusted and entranced - except for Byleth, who probably knows all of this already. Ferdinand forcibly holds back his indignance and brewing outrage while Lorenz, still seated, stares at a random spot on the table with a pinched expression on his face. Sylvain tries to lean against the table again but straightens back up, unsettled and jittery; Felix has grown utterly still, his eyes narrowed as he is sizing up a formidable, invisible enemy.

More memories clamour for Dimitri’s attention: the inscribed black mask, the distorted shapes of Cornelia and Arundel, the student who was recovered during their time at the academy - what was her name? - the ghostly soldiers, the spreading sickness. Dimitri’s head spins, the ache in it swelling and pushing insistently against the inside of his skull. He allows himself to shift his feet a fraction wider apart so that he keeps his balance. Presses his teeth together, grinding the ache between them.

One thing is clear as it twists and gnaws inside his chest.

He cannot go to Fhirdiad.

None of this is going to matter at all if the pustule of Hrym expels its plague into the world. All these deaths, all this suffering - it will all be for nothing. They will be uniting the land with it rotting right under their feet - and the pustule is already seeping. Has been seeping for years. They cannot sit around waiting for it to burst.

Dimitri is already abandoning Enbarr when his claim on it is still so fragile. And now - now his road leads to Hrym, and he feels like he is being torn apart, and none of the resulting pieces can ever be enough for what he has to do.

But he must.

“You should go north,” Claude says, and he looks pained. Weary. Older than he is. 

Dimitri grinds to a halt. “This cannot be ignored.”

“And it won’t be. I was looking into it for ages, but the pieces never quite fit together - until now.” Until a dead man’s letter provided the last clue he needed. “What they did to Ordelia - it’s my territory. I’ll deal with it.”

“You gave me the Alliance,” Dimitri points out, feeling ridiculous even as he does.

“Not quite yet - I still have the scroll, so for now, it’s my Alliance and my mess,” Claude winks and turns solemn again in the span of a breath, his eyes serious and steady. “Go home, Dimitri.”

Dimitri presses his teeth together, straightens his shoulder against the unending torrent of visions, the serpentine paths twining and disintegrating in their constant metamorphosis. 

A familiar fear seizes him in its silent way, its grip well-worn but no less dread-instilling for it. He has already attempted to wield his visions in order to protect his people - has given commands and shouted orders that would steer them that much farther away from death. Has done so cautiously, never taking the outcomes for granted, never daring to rely on it more than was absolutely needed, although ‘need’ is an arbitrary concept here.

But to let go of it completely, to entrust something so massive to another person who does not have his knowledge - it feels…

It feels scary.

What if Claude misses something? What if a crucial clue comes too late? What if _he_ comes too late?

But Dimitri is needed in Fhirdiad. And Claude is willing to go, when he could already be heading back to Almyra - would already be there if not for Dimitri’s plea back in Derdriu.

Maybe some battles can be left to other people.

A vise tightens around Dimitri’s spine at the thought, a numbing, visceral thing.

“Very well,” he speaks anyway; clears his throat when his voice emerges hoarse. “When are you leaving?”

Claude nods, satisfied. “My people are prepared to leave within a day, I’m keeping them on low alert. I can leave the heavy cavalry and infantry here to help out with the peace keeping, but the rest could move out tomorrow, after Edelgard’s funeral.”

“Good.” The sooner they set out, the better; not a day can be wasted. “I’m coming with you.”

They all grind to a halt.

“What.” Felix’s voice is a lash, sharp and stinging.

“What I mean is,” Dimitri looks from him to a bewildered Sylvain to Claude who is already opening his mouth to protest. “Ingrid warned me that the pegasi will need a few more days of rest before they can cover the stretch to Fhirdiad.” The heat of Enbarr has not been kind to the northern breed. “I will ride with you part of the way, and continue north once she catches up.”

Felix scowls down at his papers, leafing through the stack, but does not say anything.

“Sounds good, then we’ll talk on the way,” Claude claps his hands once; his gaze shifts and he smirks. “Don’t you worry, Felix, I won’t let him tag along all the way to Hrym.”

_“Ha, ha._ I’ll drag him to Fhirdiad myself.” Felix grips his papers in one hand and points them at no one in particular, his expression stormy. “A bigger headstart would’ve been nice. You know, so I don’t have to deal with everything at the last moment.”

“Delegate, Felix - see, Dimitri is already learning!” Sylvain grins and receives a smack to the chest with the stack; his face sags into a look of apprehension. “Ow?”

“Delegating, then,” Felix says pointedly. “Hope you’re good with numbers.”

Claude shakes his head and turns back to Dimitri just as Sylvain lets out a whine of protest. “Then it’s settled, I’ll tell my people to be prepared to leave tomorrow. And I’ve already summoned Raphael and Ignatz south, so you might actually fly over them.”

Dimitri inclines his head. “Any word from Fhirdiad?”

“Not as such, but the restoration is well underway from what I’ve heard.” Claude gives him a smile that is all too knowing. “They’ll be happy to have you back.”

Dimitri nods reflexively, fighting an apprehensive frown. Every response he could give here tastes fake, and so he says nothing. 

After a lot of stern looks and sterner instructions later, it is decided that Mercedes will fly out together with Ingrid, as there is still too much to be done in Enbarr to shorten her stay even by a few days, although she does insist on coming when suggested otherwise. For the same reason, part of Dimitri expects Felix to stay behind as well, but he acts as if the question of him going does not even deserve to be deigned with a response.

The rest is decided just as easily in the end. Claude’s people prepare to head to the eastern end of Adrestia, and Dimitri’s imperial generals - although ‘ex-imperial’ is probably the right word for them now - stay in Enbarr, led by Ferdinand and joined by Sylvain and Annette as representatives of the Kingdom. Sylvain has a good mind for strategy and an ability to spot budding conspiracies that can rival Claude’s, and Annette volunteered to deal with the thick fog of Dark magic still knotting the fabric of Enbarr - and though she is quite desperately needed in Fhirdiad, Dimitri cannot deny that there is no one better suited for the job.

Later that evening, Dimitri finds himself surveying the city from the square before the palace - the place where he had fought von Vestra. He is leaning his elbows on the marble balustrade, relieving the weight from his aching spine.

It is still some hours before sunset, and Dimitri picks out small hubs of activity throughout the city as people are working to heal or rebuild. The damage is not as bad as it was in Fhirdiad, where Cornelia’s contraptions trampled entire buildings. Here, the most destructive foe has been contained to the palace.

There were some fires, as they always are when there is Fire magic involved, but they have been long since put out - it turned out that the capital of the flammable south has a system in place for dealing with them quickly even in the middle of a battle, because no battle matters if all that is left to the victors in a handful of coals. 

The fires have been put out, and yet the heavy, burned stench permeates the air - the last of the pyres are still smoking outside the city walls. Dorothea had advised where best to place them, familiar with the air currents of Enbarr, but the pyres are just too numerous, and the smoke spreads, thinned out and nauseating.

Ghosts are hanging in the singed air, silent, always just on the edge of Dimitri’s field of vision. They have not left him. Edelgard’s blood has not sated them.

The headache is persistent and throbbing, spreading its roots somewhere behind his right temple. Deceiving him into thinking it to be something he could yawn away, but Dimitri knows better.

Felix is standing to his left, but where Dimitri is idle Felix is looking through a stack of reports from - at this point, Dimitri does not remember where. They spent most of the day together, constantly busy with one thing or another, and by now it is all but a blur to Dimitri, although he has little doubt that Felix will not hesitate to fill him in if necessary.

He wonders, aiming for casual, what kind of future Felix envisions for himself. Where he is going to end up, what he is going to do. His futures branch so violently - he could do anything. Be anyone. If a life of a mercenary is something he still wants, even though those probabilities originally belonged to the times where the Empire would win, nothing would stop him from getting it. 

The chances are even by now, as far as Dimitri can see, which _is_ a lot, though not nearly as comprehensible as he would sometimes prefer it to be. Felix leaves or stays, gives in to the bindings of old blood or forges on with the fierceness of new - and the only truly defining factor in this is nothing but Felix’s own will. As far as Dimitri can glimpse in this confusing, swirling storm, Felix cuts out his own path - and the irony of it, the familiarity of the sentiment is not lost on Dimitri. Maybe people are doomed to wish others what they secretly wish for themselves.

To leave or to stay will be Felix’s decision in the end - and that would not change even if Dimitri knew how to bring about the outcome he secretly, shamefully desires. Even if he knew what ropes to pull and what branches to cut off - he is not a manipulative man, and the very idea of doing so is deeply repulsive to him. If Felix chooses to become his advisor only because Dimitri has made it so - well. Dimitri does not want it.

And so he does not try. Does not even attempt to look closer into the tangle of visions shimmering Felix’s silhouette, because looking at them still feels like staring at the sun - too much, too bright, too fatal.

Dimitri cannot _look,_ but, a paradox or an act of self-destruction, he cannot really look _away_ either, half-blind and going blinder from the bright glare, not when they have been spending so much time together - and especially in the past several days, with all this work that needs to be done and everyone deferring to either of them when questions arise. 

Felix grumbles, of course, and looks entirely displeased by the nagging attention and the work, but he gets into it with the diligence Dimitri has only ever seen him dedicate to sword forms. As if dealing with paperwork is simply another skill to be honed - though maybe it is.

Even now he is working, muttering something to himself from time to time and scratching notes with a piece of charcoal while Dimitri drifts, staring at nothing at all when he should be...

Dimitri looks down at his own papers, the edges fluttering helplessly in the hot wind while the bulk of them is trapped beneath his forearms. Right.

A bitter knot forms in his throat. He holds it there, not even trying to swallow, until the ache spreads to his jaw and chest, until it is all he can think of. A punishment for daring to become distracted.

Edelgard’s funeral will be conducted the next morning, but he still has not decided exactly what to do about it - has been skirting the thought of it for days now, cowardly, for every time he steps too close his heart constricts with grief that hurts worse than any dagger wound ever could.

Saliva pools in Dimitri’s mouth, and he finally swallows, and the knot does not go anywhere from its place, crushing his windpipe.

Dimitri nods to himself. This is only fair.

Byleth could lead the funeral, of course - that would adhere to the tradition - but Edelgard stood against the Church. Or perhaps it would be alright because she respected Byleth? 

But _did_ she respect Byleth? Deeply so, in the times when they chose to lead her class and stood by her once she declared war - but what about this time?

Adrestians burn their dead swiftly and efficiently just as Faerghans do, although for opposite reasons. Dimitri is already making a mess of everything by keeping her shrouded body in her bedchambers under copious cooling spells, but there was not a second free in this past week that they could have afforded to spend on a funeral, and nobody even tried to suggest burning her with everyone else.

Besides, Dimitri does know that Adrestian royalty does not get a pyre. But then - where to even lay her to rest? In Enbarr’s mausoleum? Or send her body to the old crypt in Hresvelg with an escort?

And how to clothe her, where to walk the procession, what to sing? In Faerghus, there would be vigils, and ashed faces, and rounds of coronach in the privacy of the family crypt like Dimitri had keened for his family after the Tragedy. Adrestians chant guidance for the spirits and spill wine and sail out into the sea with lanterns to release and flowers to drown, he knows, but the intricacies of the rituals are lost on him. What is a worse crime, to enforce his own tradition or to butcher a foreign? 

Edelgard is dead, Dimitri reminds himself. She will not care. But her people will.

Dimitri tilts his head to look at Felix - hopefully inconspicuously enough - and considers asking for his opinion, but he probably does not have one either. They have not even discussed the demonic creature Edelgard has turned herself into - although by now enough patterns have aligned in his mind’s eye that Dimitri suspects it having something to do with whatever is going down in Hrym.

They have not talked about her at all, in fact, like the thought of her alone is something to be avoided. Like it is not his own sister that Dimitri killed, but some repulsive abomination, worthy only of oblivion.

Dimitri balls his hands into fists, fighting the miserable feeling between his ribs, the ringing in his chest.

Useless. All of this is useless. He does not know what she would have wanted. Has no right to pretend otherwise.

Even her ghost is not here - Dimitri has not seen it at all. A humourless smile twists his lips at the thought that he could have consulted her this way, at least.

“Your Highness.”

Dimitri is torn out of the clutch of his thoughts by an insistent voice that sounds entirely too real to belong to a ghost, and he turns around to the sight of Lysithea scowling up at him.

“Oh. Good evening,” he greets her. “Is everything alright?”

She is not the kind of person to seek Dimitri out - he casts his mind back and realizes he does not remember the last time they exchanged words that were not related to immediate orders on the battlefield.

Lysithea’s scowl, impossibly, deepens; Felix, now in Dimitri’s void, shifts - he is probably looking at her as well.

“I heard you still haven’t decided what to do about tomorrow morning,” she says, and her voice is razor-sharp.

Dimitri considers the edge of it, but whatever fight she might be trying to pick, he is not in the mood. “It is not an easy decision to make,” he replies.

“Yes, it is,” Lysithea counters immediately and places her hands on her waist. “She’d want her ashes to be poured into Velgё.”

“How do you know that,” Felix asks before Dimitri can, and he hears the frown in his voice, can imagine it well enough without needing to look.

Dimitri - did not know that Lysithea and Edelgard were friends, close enough for her to entrust the other with something so personal. Did not know Lysithea was privy to what Edelgard thought and wanted the way Dimitri never was.

His wretched stomach turns.

“Not - she did not wish to be laid to rest in the mausoleum?” he asks.

“I’ve just told you what she wished for, haven’t I?” Lysithea crosses her arms now, looking thunderous. “Don’t put words in her mouth!”

“Lysithea,” Felix drawls, but there is an edge to his voice now too.

Dimitri looks over her small form, her white hair just like Edelgard’s - was it always like that? Was it not ever - darker? and curly? He cannot remember her from the academy days, but maybe…

Something in her future is tremulous and brittle, a stubborn plant clinging to a cliffside. There used to be a different path, a sturdier one - but it withered away together with the times when her hair got to stay dark.

Maybe Lysithea is not looking for a fight. Maybe she has been in one all this time.

“If you want to show your respect for her - because if you don’t, I have no clue what all this farce is about - then listen to what I’m saying,” Lysithea presses, and - yes, she expects to be disagreed with but insists anyway.

Dimitri imagines a map of the land. If Edelgard were poured into Velgё, she would be carried all the winding way through Hresvelg and its old capital on the river, and into the Ionii Bay.

She just wanted to go home, too.

Dimitri nods, cannot help a small smile at the way Lysithea almost staggers from surprise. “Then we will do just that.”

*

It takes them two days to reach the branching point of Dleri and Velgё. They go on horseback and take the cavalry ahead with them, leaving the fliers to babysit the infantry for the time being: Dimitri is in a hurry to reach the junction of the two rivers before Ingrid catches up, but he and Claude have a lot to talk about. Claude temporarily abandons the sky, but the phantom of his wyvern comes with them, never dipping out of sight where it’s trapped under the thick, weighted dome.

Dimitri tells Claude as much as he can - as much as it is possible for him to untangle from the snake nest of his visions. Which is not nearly as much as he actually glimpses, but even that is more than he could possibly have found out on his own. He invents a vague and terribly flimsy cover story, in the end bringing up Cornelia’s name on a hunch. If Claude suspects anything - though it is definitely not a question of ‘if’ - he does not point it out. Maybe it helps that Dimitri’s cryptic insights have been beneficial so far, maybe it does not, but Dimitri is not about to question his whimsical luck.

In return, Claude tells him more of what he learned from Rhea. Areadbhar is a sinewy grin where it rests, strapped to the tack of Dimitri’s horse, and Failnaught is a sharp curve across Claude’s back, as is the cracked carapace of Aegis that bobs before Dimitri’s eye like a will-o’-wisp whenever Felix is riding way ahead of him in the dark. Dimitri knows that the Relics are bone, knows they are magic, knows that the torrent that brought them into the ten bloodlines churns darker and stranger than anyone could imagine - has known it for a long time, actually, without giving it conscious thought.

According to Rhea, at the bottom of that torrent lie the dismembered, flayed, staked out bodies of the children of the progenitor god. 

The divine right, the ancient tradition - nothing more than another massacre. Nothing less than a merciless slaughter.

Dimitri considers the thought, shifts warily when it nudges him closer to his own memories.

Plans are forming in his mind - nothing but shadows and hints for now, but he feels their slow, unassuming growth, leaves them to ruminate, not trusting himself to be careful enough with a conscious approach.

They get into a few skirmishes on the way, mostly with civilian resistance - though, thankfully, the majority allows the cavalry to pass without confrontation. It would be ridiculous to expect such a proud and ancient nation to bow before a conqueror without a fight - and not to try to get up after getting subdued. Dimitri does not blame them.

The fabric of the future stretches and billows where it is caught on spears and lances and pikes, making Dimitri suppress a wince of dread.

*

The ground at the junction of Dleri and Velgё is soggy, the narrow corner between the two rivers more marshes than anything else, low and begging for the cover of water. 

They are on Dleri’s southern side, and it takes Dimitri some effort to convince Claude that he does not, in fact, need guards to escort him across.

What he does need is a lift, and Claude calls down their only wyvern to bring him over the wide water. The saddle is not designed to be shared, but Félicité is trained to carry people in her claws, and when Dimitri sees Felix step into position on her other side, he does not find it in himself to protest.

Maybe he does want someone to be there.

The spongy soil dips under their weight when Félicité drops them and veers upwards, water glistening where it is pressed to the surface from under their boots. The uncertain bank bleeds into the riverbed, and Dimitri ponders the oily swirls of moisture as they are pushed inland, to swirl and stagnate.

He squelches on. It is not a long journey to the blurred edge of the water, but the mud sucks on his boots and hesitates to release him with every step.

Dimitri hears Felix’s irritated huff behind him, hears him turn and move and stop. When he looks over his shoulder, he finds Felix perched on a small mound of soil - if not for the shaggy, brambly growth that is currently bending towards the ground under Felix’s weight, it would look a lot like the way frozen earth up north swells and bursts after a sudden thawing.

Felix tests his perch and nods to Dimitri. His intention is probably to stay on lookout where he is not actually trapped in mud.

Just as well. Dimitri does not mind him there as a witness - after all, he was there when… - but he does not want him close either. Not right now. Not with this.

Not with this.

Edelgard’s ashes were placed in a small wooden box and wrapped in a cloth and carried in a saddlebag, and Dimitri spent the journey with the wooden urn burning the back of his mind almost like a physical touch, a red-hot needle at the base of his skull. 

He wanted, many times, to take it out of the bag, to keep it cradled in his free arm on the march. He did not do it.

The paths that did not come to be are fading out, one by one, have been fading out since the moment Areadbhar bit into Edelgard. Since the moment where everything hung suspended and everything existed at once, before dividing into what was now real and what was only a wishful thought. Once the last of the paths fade away - they almost have, there are not many left - Edelgard will be truly dead.

Dimitri is wading into Velgё now. So it seems, at least - he can only judge by the brown, murky water rising to his mid-shins, by the current tugging lazily at his greaves.

The box is pressed to his chest. What would he say if she still lived? What would _she_ say? Would it be any different if there were no more secrets between them? If they shared the side of the frontline instead of opposing each other?

Could he have done anything sooner if he were not so blind? If he could see anything past the creeping, poisonous veil of madness and anger and grief?

There are no answers. He feels the questions etch themselves into him anyway, at the end of a long, long list that rests heavily on his spine.

They did not deserve this. Any of this. But Dimitri gets to stay.

There is still no ghost of Edelgard, but he catches sight of her in his mind once he stops and unwraps the box, letting the silk flutter away. Only a short glimpse of a lined face, half-turned away, framed by hair that is softening into gray.

And then the image is gone.

There is nothing left for them.

The bow of Dimitri’s mouth twists, strained and tired. He presses his lips together before they can begin to tremble.

The futures have all almost faded away by now. There is nothing left to await - and should be nothing left to mourn, bar one last thing.

Dimitri unlocks the box and holds it closer to his chest, pressing it in until he can imagine the feel of it through his armour. 

And then, he lets her go.

*

Dimitri has always felt a bit more miserable in the twilight. He could never figure out why. Something about the day quietly exhaling its last breath as the night begins to swell. The gentle, warm, imperceptible rot, as soft as a mother’s embrace must feel. 

Right now, though, he does understand why the twilight descends especially stifling and lonely. Even though he should not be feeling like this, his heart disregards any reasoning and bleeds anyway.

Dimitri is riding alone, far enough ahead that the sounds of the cavalry behind him are but a hum, a sleepy buzz of a beehive at the promise of nearing rest. He is staying within the line of sight, but just barely so. Had asked everyone for some distance, even Felix - this way, he can almost pretend that he is alone again, and free to mourn the way his heart begs him to.

But he still does not cry.

He is already ruining everything by needing to grieve in the first place, already disrespecting Edelgard by feeling so strongly when she cannot do anything to make him stop. The least Dimitri’s body could do is to let him go through with it already so that he could, eventually, leave it behind.

Instead, he is kept suspended and frozen to the bone. Trying to grieve and feeling bad for needing it at all, for feeling like he has any right to do so. Edelgard’s death was not about him, and her ashes dissolving into the slow waters of Velgё were not about him, and yet here he is and he cannot even _cry._

Dimitri does not remember what happened. Remembers most of what came before it, and some of what descended after, but he does not remember the moment he ran her through with Areadbhar. Recalls only the sick finality of it, the pressure and the weight traveling from the shaft and reverberating in his arm. The blind shock, every shadow turned into black and every scrap of light thrown into violent crimson. The horrible stillness before she fell.

Why did she stab him? At the end of everything, at the edge of oblivion - why did she refuse his hand?

Did dying truly feel like a better option?

More questions that he will never get the answer to.

Dimitri has no right to question her. Never had this right, but especially not since he made it through the gates of Enbarr, through von Vestra’s defences, through the doors of the throne room.

He truly did think that they would stand together. So many visions, so many paths - and she walked the one Dimitri did not expect her to walk.

“I did not see it,” Dimitri murmurs softly, weighs the words on his tongue, the failure they carry. “I did not see…”

“You cannot always see what’s coming.”

Dimitri starts in his saddle, his body fully alert before his mind can catch up with it. Byleth is riding next to him - he did not even notice when they had pulled ahead of others to join him. Despite his wishes.

“Forgive me, I did not mean to - I was just thinking aloud,” he hurries to say, winces at the reflexive apology - he _asked_ to be left alone.

And it is kind of them, of course, to offer condolences, but the words ring empty. It is hidden from Byleth just how crucially Dimitri misunderstood, how terribly, fatally he misjudged. If they knew, they would not be so quick to offer him kindness.

Dimitri turns towards them to express his gratitude anyway but the words die on his tongue when their eyes meet - and he sees it, the particular kind of solemnity that comes from…

“You know something.” All air leaves Dimitri in one startled exhale.

Byleth’s eyes widen, and Dimitri freezes. Did he misunderstand - again? Did he misinterpret it somehow, the awareness, the gravity in their expression? Did he read too much into it, in his eternal, exhausting, merciless chase after answers, any answers at all?

Dimitri is ready to backtrack, to apologize when Byleth speaks, their eyes now trained firmly on the road between the ears of their horse.

“There is nothing I could - explain to you.”

The wording catches at something in Dimitri, pulls at the space behind his heart.

“So you - you _do_ know something? About what is wrong with me? But you would not - tell me?”

Byleth’s gaze is water escaping between Dimitri’s fingers.

“Does it matter _why_ we are capable of a certain thing?” they say after a pause. “Is it not more important what we can do with it?”

Dimitri shakes his head, precarious, the cuts on him fraying in the wind. But he knows it already, he sees it - Byleth will not speak. Whatever this is - whatever serrated _thing_ sits in Dimitri’s chest, in _their,_ perhaps, chest as well - they will not say it.

Would they, if they chose to lead his class all those years ago? If they guided him through the war the same way they guided Claude? What does Claude now know that Dimitri never will?

Dimitri’s mouth is a twisted, bitter line. He unwinds it.

Something spills out. “When you first appeared - I knew it was going to be important. That your decision - your choice - would shape the world.”

Claude and Edelgard to either side of him. Byleth before him. The shadows of violent, bloody futures devouring them all, triumphant and greedy. 

“And?” Byleth’s voice slices through the old, faded fabric of the vision. “Did it really matter, in the end?”

Dimitri considers their words. Thinks about - Dedue, accepting Areadbhar from Rodrigue into his calloused hands. Claude, signing a long scroll, the inky sutures still shining wet on the parchment. Felix, raising Aegis on the steps of the palace. His classmates - generals - friends answering the summons to Garreg Mach simply because a few hastily written letters promised the unmaking of his death.

He forgets to respond to Byleth. But they read the answer in the change in his face.

“Then maybe it wasn’t my decisions that truly made a difference,” they conclude.

Dimitri turns to the future again, opening his mind to the frothing flood of it. The headache that flares at the act is almost a comfort in how familiar it feels.

A shape pokes out of the rapids, a shiny and slick stone. Distracted, Dimitri reaches for it, for the impression of a web of tinted light thrown over pale green hair.

“I will need your help,” he says, certain in his knowledge even as it comes to him.

Byleth inclines their head, raises it again in a counterpoint to the next fall of the horse’s gait.

“Then ask for it, when the time comes.”

Dimitri frowns. “It is never that simple.”

But Byleth only shrugs in response.

Ahead, the road stretches. 

*

Ingrid’s fliers catch up with them the next day. Dimitri sifts through his visions with an almost manic fervour for any last-minute revelations, anything that might help, anything that would make even a modicum of sense. But Claude already knows everything Dimitri had managed to glean, and soon enough, there is nothing left to do. Everyone says their goodbyes and their well-wishing, and the pegasi head out north.

If not for the soldiers, if not for the battered land and the exhaustion and the deep-seated dread that does not let up no matter how many battles they have fought - and if not for Mercedes with them instead of Sylvain - this could almost be a trip Dimitri and his friends would sometimes make as children. Not this far, of course, and not on pegasi, and with the adults always on the periphery, but…

Nights grow colder as they move across the continent, and Dimitri looks at the faces of his friends as they huddle around a fire in the darkness, and he knows that this is not like childhood at all.

And every morning they rise up into the air that carries the lingering crispness of mountain nights at the fracture between summer and autumn, and direct their pegasi towards the brightest star, and let King’s Right Hand guide the children of the north back home.

*

“I really do not think this is necessary, Dedue.”

Dedue gives Dimitri a look. “I hope you do not expect me, of all people, to remind you of Faerghan customs.”

“No, of course not.” Dimitri sighs. “It is just - a very long cloak.”

And it really is, Dimitri is simply stating a fact. A ‘train’ would be a better name for how it trails behind him on the floor for at least two additional meters of heavy, deep-blue fabric. Dimitri already knows that there are two pages waiting outside the door to carry it so it does not drag on the ground, although for now Dedue has banished everyone from the room and attends to Dimitri himself with the final preparations.

Dimitri is wearing a set of parade armour, gleaming white metal etched with gold ornaments and the Crest of Blaiddyd branded in the middle of the breastplate. Some of the pauldron and cuisse plates have been switched out for ones made of black metal to match his ever-present gauntlets.

It has only ever been worn for coronations, thus spending more time in the smithy getting adjusted for the next monarch than actually worn, and it makes him feel - clunky and bulky and stiff, ill-fitting in his own skin moreso than usual. A ceremonial sword is strapped to his belt, an unfamiliar weight.

Dimitri’s hair has been trimmed and pulled back from his face, the clasp small and unobtrusive enough that it would not interfere with the crown, and he does not even know where his old eyepatch is - he must not forget to put the new one on. 

He managed to stand his ground against the jewellery, lest it, combined with the armour, blinds half the city the moment Dimitri steps out into the sun.

“At least it is light enough to save you from overheating,” Dedue says as he fastens one clasp of the cloak and moves to the other, taking it from Dimitri’s hand. “It could have been the gryphon pelt.”

Dimitri shudders inwardly. “Goddess, do not remind me.”

He has grown - somewhat sensitive to heat ever since Enbarr. It is lucky, then, that he hails from the cold Faerghus lands, but this year, autumn hesitates to let go of the summer warmth. The week he has spent in Fhirdiad so far has been stifling, and being packed away into the armour brings an uncomfortably antsy, trapped feeling with it.

It is only for a few hours.

Well - quite a number of hours. It is only noon.

Dimitri sighs again. He has been doing that a lot today.

Dedue steps back, running keen eyes over him; Dimitri watches them dart from one detail to the next, making sure nothing is out of place. That no cracks are showing.

After a minute, Dedue nods to himself.

“You look great, Dimitri.”

Dimitri gives him a small smile. “Thank you, my friend.”

He does not _feel_ great. He is probably supposed to, today of all days.

Dedue’s gaze flicks to the side and his brows furrow as he seems to remember something. “I am going to make sure everything is running smoothly,” he says. “Lord Seteth had some...last minute suggestions. I will check if they were addressed.”

“Thank you,” Dimitri repeats numbly. Seteth has been...in a strange mood, ever since the war’s end. But with Rhea retired and Byleth still down south, Seteth is the best candidate for officiating the coronation.

Still, Dedue hesitates even as he speaks again. "We will await you outside when you are ready."

Dedue shifts a foot back in a suggestion of a step, eyes trained on Dimitri, waiting for his permission - or maybe waiting to see whether Dimitri would shake apart with no one there to watch over him. 

Dimitri reaches out before he can think, twitches his fingers away when he realizes their movement but the plea is already tumbling out. "Dedue..." 

He does not know how to ask for it, how to articulate even to himself, but Dedue seems to understand anyway. He closes the half-step of a distance between them and folds Dimitri into his chest in one smooth motion, his arms secure and grounding where Dimitri can feel their pressure through the armour.

All air leaves Dimitri in a sigh, and he allows himself to slump into Dedue's solid form, allows himself to feel small against his frame. Just a little bit, just for a moment...

Dimitri's cheek rests on Dedue's shoulder, on the folded and pressed fabric - he is not required to wear armour for the ceremony - and Dimitri cannot feel the pulse in his neck or chest from this position, but he can imagine it well enough. They stay close like this, haunted and scarred and somehow still living, until the door whispers open. 

Dimitri cannot bring himself to move, but Dedue's hold on him tightens a fraction as he looks up at the intruder and relaxes again.

"Felix," he says, as much for Dimitri's benefit as to greet him.

With a final sigh, Dimitri steps away.

"Dedue," Felix responds. Shifts his gaze, "Dimitri."

Dedue looks between them and seems to come to a conclusion. He gives Dimitri a bow. "I will be there when you are ready, Your Highness."

"Please," Dimitri reproaches him gently, but Dedue only smiles.

"This is my last opportunity to address you so. Allow me to have this."

With that, he leaves the two of them alone.

Felix shifts on his feet, restless, uneasy. His embroidered dress is black, with insets of Fraldarian teal and traditional accents of Blaiddyd blue, the sharp lines of the cut accentuating his wide shoulders of a swordsman, his narrow waist; his cloak is black velvet with teal and celadon on the inside; thin black gloves with patterns of braided leather reach up his forearms, snug around each finger; and the buttons on his dress and black boots are embossed silver, as are the clasps in his tamed hair. 

Felix is here, dressed for his coronation, at the heels of a war that he has walked by his side, and he is so beautiful that after a moment Dimitri realizes that he has to relearn how to breathe.

Felix clears his throat, easing the sound into the silence. "Your - eyepatch."

In a flash of alarm, Dimitri reaches up to touch the skin under his right eye, turns around to search for the eyepatch by the mirror. It is white leather embroidered with gold, made to complement the rest of his outfit, soft and sleek, so unlike the itchy scrap he has been wearing for Goddess knows how many years. Its strap is already tied.

"How did you…" Felix blurts out, and in the polished silver, Dimitri sees how his eyes widen in surprise at himself. "Never mind."

Dimitri glances down at the eyepatch, but only sees falling rocks, the freezing rush of lightless river water. Looking Felix in the eye is suddenly impossible, scratches under his skin, and he wonders if this is how Felix always feels. 

Maybe, right now, Felix is just as out of his depth as Dimitri is.

"I - am not exactly sure."

In his periphery, Dimitri sees Felix's reflection give a jerky nod. The patch settles in its place, cool against his half-closed eyelid.

Dimitri leans his hands against the carved wood. The mirror looms before his lowered head, and he watches the reflection of his fingers flex against the oak, white leather under black metal.

"What's on your mind?"

Here Felix goes again - checking in with him, like before a major battle.

Though is it not, in a sense, the greatest battle of all Dimitri will ever have to fight?

What _is_ on his mind? A face splits from the darkness of it, hopeful, twisted - is corroded away by the same darkness.

"Edelgard."

"What _was_ it, even," Felix frowns, jerking Dimitri's eye to his own, and for a moment his and Edelgard's faces melt strangely into one. "Some kind of Demonic Beast?"

They still have not talked about this - until now. Have not talked about how Dimitri had crumpled back to his knees, with the dead howling in his ears, demanding that he joined her, that he stayed there, that he never got up again - how Felix appeared out of the storm and hauled him up to his feet and away - away from the spreading pool of blood, away from the splintered floor and the broken glass. Away from the dagger that Dimitri unthinkingly wrenched out of his own chest, as if it would have undone the action. Away from Edelgard’s still body.

"Yes. No. I do not know," Dimitri hunches his shoulders. "It was her, in the end. I killed _her._ Not some creature."

He must remember it. He must carry it.

Felix is silent.

Words crawl up Dimitri's throat, uncertain and viscous. He forces them out. It is better this way.

"You must be disappointed in me." 

A sharp intake of breath, a failed attempt to mask it. Felix's reflection wavers.

"Why?"

"You asked me if I - if I would have the resolve to strike her down." She peers at him from his memory, white and red against the blackness. "And then I kept saying how I would find another way - and then, the choice was not even mine, in the end."

What a mess. And he, amidst it, forever at the whim of the currents, no matter how hard he tries. A poor parody of a leader - a helpless, useless…

"Dimitri. Look at me."

Dimitri lifts his burning eye to the mirror, but Felix taps his foot, his arms crossed, until he gets the hint and turns around.

Felix glances at him and away, as if repelled by a misaligned magnet. Forces his eyes to meet Dimitri's and stay there.

"Are you asking me if I should be disappointed in you for getting _stabbed?_ or for - I don’t know, conquering the bloodlust that has guided your every step since - since everything went to hell?"

When he puts it like that… "But I could not even - it did not even matter…"

Felix scoffs. "You made a choice. You made a decision to offer mercy where previously you only wanted revenge, and you stood by that decision even in the face of doubt. I interrogated you openly, and you stood your ground." He uncrosses his arms and spreads them in a gesture of confusion. "I don't know why you put so much stock in my opinion, but if you want it, here: I kept following you, did I not?"

Felix kept following him. Questioning him, challenging him, daring him to do better, _be_ better. Took a hit for him - twice. Fought over his dying body, even when he had no reason to believe in him, to believe that he could ever be anyone _worth_ following.

Dimitri is struck by the odd thought of _nostalgia_ for the wartime. How is he going to deal with any of this without Felix's help?

He still does not know what Felix is going to decide.

Felix swallows audibly and finally looks away, having said too much in one go. The tension in him is palpable, and his words float between them, exposed, transparent.

Trumpets sound outside, the opening notes to _'The Glory of Faerghus'._ They both start at the tune.

"You should head out soon," Felix glances out of the window. "My father must be vibrating out of his skin by now."

"Oh?" Dimitri says, dumbly.

"Eager to officially swear his fealty," Felix rolls his eyes. "House Fraldarius stands with you. As always."

A fond warmth spreads around Dimitri's heart, but it tastes hollow.

"I am grateful for it," he says anyway, because that is the truth. Two trees, their branches and roots braided together, separation boding illness and decay.

"Good," Felix nods. "I'd hate to get stuck doing a thankless job."

The warmth contracts into a sharp point of near-pain, making Dimitri's heart skip a beat in its grip. "You…?"

Felix rolls his eyes again - at Dimitri this time. "Don't get ridiculous, now."

"I am not - Felix, I didn't expect…"

A swift shadow falls across Felix's face - hurt?

"Well, get used to it then," his smile is quick and crooked. "You're appointing your cabinet next week, so there's time. Unless you've got a better candidate lined up," he adds, as if they do not both know the truth.

"I have not," Dimitri feels a dopey smile fighting its way to his face, lets it win. "Thank you for the warning."

_"Boar,"_ Felix warns him, but the once-sharp word lacks the heat. "Stop it. You make me actually find the crowd more tolerable than this."

Dimitri's smile softens, impossibly, further. "I will see you outside, then."

Felix points a finger at him. "Stop doing that thing with your face. I'm leaving. See you outside." He pauses in the doorway. “You look - good, like this. Gold’s good on you.” Felix frowns, as if catching himself. “Also, that cloak is too long. Don’t trip and fall like an idiot.”

Dimitri huffs out a laugh. The door closes behind Felix, and with a final sigh, Dimitri feels the tension return to his body as his mind follows Felix into the world beyond. How everything is going to change once Dimitri steps into it - how everything is already changing. How the path leading to this moment is paved with corpses - sometimes innocent corpses, sometimes very dear. How many more lie ahead?

Dimitri sits down heavily on a divan, takes a deep breath as he lets his head hang low, for a moment relieving his shoulders of any weight - but only for a moment.

Then, he gets up and steps out of the room.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter very unsubtly features my OTP from "fire emblem: awakening" xD

_ but where is your memory, a string of tin rings?  _

_ but where is your heart, a sweet silver bell?  _

_ got lost on the way, exchanged for a drink?  _

_ got stolen by thieves on the mountain pass?  _

_ I've let you in, I've forgiven you - _

_ don't cry for your heart, I will smith you another _

“With all due respect, Your Majesty,” Count Rowe leans back in his chair and runs a hand over his long beard in a repetitive motion, as if he is petting a cat resting on his stomach. “I don’t see how the Kleiman Province at all fits in this discussion.”

“Well, maybe if you listened the first time it was explained,” Felix jeers from Dimitri’s void, even though he is not the one being addressed. “Or don’t, and we’ll just volunteer your resources.”

“Your Grace,” the Count somehow makes it sound like a grandfatherly reproach. “See it from my position, I implore you. Not all of us are blessed with the honor of having His Majesty’s ear.”

Dimitri valiantly and forcefully suppresses the urge to groan as he for the millionth time regrets encouraging people speaking up against him. Is the entire Rowe family like this? Or did they just send their second-slimiest representative now that the champion is gone?

He considers putting Rowe into his place but decides to let Felix have a go first.

“And you are too cocky for someone who became Count only because his traitor brother fucked off the continent,” Felix elivers instantly. When Dimitri tilts his head, he can see Felix glare at the people around the table as they mutter among themselves at the expletive. “In case any of you agree with him: you can have the King’s ear once you actually have something  _ useful _ to say.”

The murmurs come to an abrupt stop, sliced dead by Felix’s glare.

The council is unorthodox, made up mostly of representatives rather than the dukes and counts themselves. Barely a moon since Dimitri’s coronation, the war is still fresh on everyone’s minds, and the damage still too demanding for the ruling nobles to be called away from their respective lands. Not to mention the harvest season - which is why the council is always scheduled during winter.

There are familiar faces, of course. Felix is here both as the Advisor and as Rodrigue’s representative since his return to Fraldarius; Ashe, the freshly minted lord of Gaspard, is still settling into his new role; and Dedue returned the previous night from Duscur, ready to report on the state of affairs beyond the mountains. He holds himself immaculately, as always, but Dimitri knows him well enough to notice the tightness around his eyes that betrays his exhaustion from the long ride back to Fhirdiad.

The other seven people in the room Dimitri would not necessarily call his friends. Count Galatea has sent his eldest son Bjarne, whom Dimitri at least somewhat remembers from his childhood, and Lady Yelailah, the niece of Countess Charon, is a not entirely unfamiliar face either. The Margrave of Gautier is here in person, which was baffling to Dimitri until Felix pointed out that he was very likely exiled to the capital by his spouse for the duration of the council session. Dimitri is secretly glad that Sylvain is still down south - he would probably not appreciate his father being here if he were in Fhirdiad as well.

Which leaves four. Count Tiberius Rowe fled to Dagda once the western lords started folding, following Dimitri’s victory in Fhirdiad. His younger brother Hyxamon declared not to share Tiberius’s views and readily swore fealty, which Dimitri counted as an easy win until their first council meeting rolled around and the man turned out to be completely insufferable.

Duke Mateus had fled Fódlan as well, taking his wife and children with him, which left the duchy to another branch of the family, resulting in a quick-eyed and laconic young man named Yrvach seated between Hyxamon and Yelailah. Duke Gideon and Countess Magdred stayed and accepted the judgement, which so far has led them to house arrest and getting stripped of their titles in favour of those sides of their family trees that had joined the resistance during the war.

Lady Chiaro of Gideon and Lord Bero of Magdred are perfectly capable people, obviously smart and with a good eye for politics. Good picks for Dimitri’s temporary autumnal council while their relatives are righting the land from the height of their brand new lordships.

In a group, however, they are more reminiscent of animals squabbling at a watering hole, always driving Dimitri’s headache to incomprehensible heights within the first few minutes without fail.

There is nobody from the Duchy of Itha, of course.

Felix seems to find the whole ordeal at least as taxing as Dimitri does, but the crucial difference between them is that Felix does not feel obligated to give his dues to decorum, tearing into anyone who is deemed a source of irritation until the person is sufficiently cowed - or until Dimitri steps in to stop them before it turns into actual bloodshed.

It is not like he disagrees with Felix’s sentiments, necessarily, although nobody needs to know that. But there is only so much time Dimitri can spend on the meetings in a day, and wasting half of it observing Felix’s brilliant, unapologetic wrath, although  _ very _ entertaining, is ultimately unproductive.

Count Rowe has yet to learn the lesson of going up against Felix, judging by his attempt to keep arguing.

Alright. Enough is enough.

“We will table this for now,” Dimitri decides, interrupting him mid-word. “Dedue - if you would like to stay after the meeting is finished.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Dedue replies on his left, uttering his first words since arriving at the meeting. Staunchly ignoring the obvious looks of distaste from some of the other attendants, though whether they are caused by his nationality or his status as a commoner, Dimitri would not know.

It is probably both.

_ ‘Blatant favouritism,’ _ Lady Chiaro does not say but still wrinkles her nose.

Well. If they could have a civil conversation about Duscur in the meeting, there would be no  _ need _ for a private one.

Dimitri hears the creaking of leather to his right, which must be Felix flexing his gloved fingers in irritation. That makes two of them, really, but the agenda for today is long and they are not even halfway done.

Dimitri clears his throat. “Lord Gaspard, Lord Bero - I would like to hear about the Adrestian border.”

*

“Flames, the new Rowe is just as horrible as the previous one,” Felix does not even bother to hide his scowl as he gets up and stretches once everyone files out, leaving him, Dimitri, and Dedue in the council room. 

This is exactly Dimitri’s impression, which leaves him feeling strangely validated.

“Do you think so? I would say, he was not that bad today,” he says anyway just to rile him up.

Felix whirls around to glower at him. “If bitching for half an hour about the incompetence of the new Magdred counts as ‘not that bad’ in your eyes, you need to get them checked. It. Eye. Get it checked.”

He looks frazzled somehow as he trips over the words, and Dimitri cannot help the chuckle that escapes him. “Good thing you’re here to rein them all in, then. What would I do without you, Felix.”

He winces inwardly as it comes out - way too sincere for what is supposed to be a joke.

It remains a struggle for Dimitri, sometimes, to truly accept that Felix is here.

Felix is still high-strung, still living on wartime - and Dimitri cannot pretend he does not understand the feeling, that he does not keep a dagger under his pillow, that he does not know the swooping and sinking sensation every time he receives intelligence reports of skirmishes and budding riots - mostly throughout Adrestia but often on its borders too.

Dimitri knows that all the reports pass through Felix’s hands before they reach his own, and every time he sees Felix shatter into probabilities wrenched out of him by the insistent call of the quivering ghost of war. Waits, with bated breath, as the spiderweb grows and grows - Felix leaves to fight, to subdue, to suppress, Felix gives up on returning, on being an advisor, on… But every time, the moment of decision comes and goes, and Felix stays.

Which does not mean that he has turned meek or complacent. He simply realized soon enough that the council, too, is a battlefield of sorts, that the war waged on paper is still a war. It is not the same, of course: Felix has always preferred the straightforwardness of combat to the mind games of the court, and Dimitri cannot begrudge him -  _ would _ not begrudge him if he decided to leave.

But instead, Felix sinks his teeth into the nobles with an astounding level of ferocity, launching merciless counter-attacks whenever someone questions the Crown’s decisions or is simply too slow or obtuse for Felix’s liking.

He fights with Dimitri too. Quite often, in fact, but always out of earshot of everyone else, even when Dimitri can  _ see  _ him forcibly holding himself back. Dimitri is headstrong, and Felix is impatient, and they are both their own kinds of stubborn, so arguments are inevitable, but Dimitri finds himself -  _ welcoming _ them. He and Felix have come a long way, to be comfortable enough with each other to fight like this. It is  _ good _ that Felix challenges him instead of giving up and stalking away like he would do not so long ago. It makes the country stronger.

Maybe, it makes Dimitri stronger, too.

And it certainly helps that these days, their arguments concern the future of the continent rather than Dimitri’s maimed past.

Dimitri looks down at the post-meeting notes left to him by the scribe. The western border is really taking the brunt of the Adrestian unrest - he must not forget to write to Ferdinand about it.

And then there is still the entirety of the almost-former Leicester Alliance with its own problems, though certainly far from the Adrestian scale. It was decided to keep it semi-autonomous for the time being while they are slowly piecing Faerghus back together and stopping Adrestia’s attempts to stoke the embers into a new war, but Lorenz still keeps Dimitri in the loop as they are laying groundwork for the looming unification.

At least the people of the Alliance are back in their homes by now. A letter came from Claude not too long ago with the news of their campaign in Hrym, with Failnaught enclosed, as well as the signed scroll that was already slightly battered from the endless travel. The letter ended with  _ ‘remember this favour when I come for a visit, wearing a crown of my own’, _ and Dimitri strongly suspects that he will find out exactly what it means when they open negotiations with Almyra.

“Hyxamon is acting  _ very _ suspicious about the border. It shouldn’t be taking him this much effort to hold it. Ashe agrees with me.” Felix is obviously still stewing. “I’ve said this before, but it was a  _ foolish _ idea to give him the county. Him and the new Mateus - I don’t like him either.”

“The laws of title inheritance put Hyxamon next in line,” Dimitri points out, still in his notes.

“And that matters why, precisely?” Felix dismisses him instantly. “We could’ve deposed the family just like we did with the rest.”

“He did swear fealty.” Dimitri puts the notes down and touches his burning temples, finally allowing his eye to close.

“That means nothing. Haven’t you heard of treachery? Ever?”

“Felix - enough.” Dimitri is suddenly too tired to deal with this. “I cannot go around suspecting everyone of plotting. We will get nowhere like this. It will be nothing but overcrowded prisons and paranoia and exactly no work done. Rowe is trustworthy until proven otherwise.”

What he cannot tell Felix is that while there  _ are _ darker paths branching out from people - not only from Rowe, but from everyone - they are not...supernaturally evil or unfathomable or completely incomprehensible. They are just - human vices, human mistakes. Dangerous and potentially harmful, yes, but after Cornelia, and Arundel, and the terrible husk of Edelgard, Dimitri is confident that he can deal with an unruly lord or two.

There is a pause, long enough that Dimitri opens his eye to glance at Felix. Felix’s gaze in on him, and his expression is strange, like he has eaten something foul - but he jerks his eyes away before Dimitri can decipher it.

“What did I say?” he asks, confused.

“Nothing.” Felix busies himself collecting his own notes, scattered on the table. “You’re - idealistic.”

Dimitri frowns, unsure how to take it. “I want to do right by my people.”

“No, it’s not...it’s not a bad thing. Necessarily,” Felix grumbles and straightens up, the heavy leather folder held tightly against his chest. He looks - inexplicably flushed, and seems to be very interested in whatever is happening outside the nearest window.

“Hm. If you say so.” Dimitri must be missing something. It definitely feels this way.

Beside him, Dedue lets out a heavy sigh.

Right! “Oh, my friend, I should not have kept you waiting,” Dimitri turns towards him in his seat. “My deepest apologies. Felix,” he turns again. This is making his head spin, “Will I see you later? I would like your input on the financial census that Lorenz sent us.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Felix breezes past them and towards the door. “I’m going to train while there’s time. Find me there, if you want.”

“Will do!” Dimitri smiles at Felix’s back, then at the door as a guard in the corridor closes it behind Felix.

The prospect of spending the afternoon poring over the census and the endless Faerghus’s debts to Leicester suddenly does not feel so dreadful anymore.

Dedue clears his throat, and Dimitri remembers himself. “Oh - I’m sorry once again.” He gives Dedue a small, guilty smile. “I do not know what it is with me today, and you must still be tired from your journey.”

“No need to concern yourself, Dimitri,” Dedue slowly shakes his head.

Duscur was not ravaged by the war, out of the way and behind the pikes of the Gwenhwyvar Mountains. But the damage already done to it has been festering for a decade - and it is not like the relations between the secluded nation and the heavy beast of Faerghus were ever truly good, even before the Tragedy.

Dimitri’s plan is to support the restoration of Duscur and eventually to announce its sovereignty - hence Dedue’s trip to judge the state and the moods of the land. The Crown cannot afford to spend much, right now, but this is not only about the material side of things.

It turned out that Rodrigue had learned about Kleiman’s hand in the Tragedy as well. He had been put under arrest, but Rodrigue left the rest of it to Dimitri.

Dimitri mulls over the torn remnants of the discussion he had attempted to have during the meeting. “So. Kleiman will be put to trial.”

Dedue’s brows knit together. “Pardon me,” he says carefully. “I inferred that it was a foregone conclusion.”

“Oh, apologies, I meant - that the people of Duscur should conduct said trial,” Dimitri clarifies.

A pause. Dedue’s face grows deliberately blank, but Dimitri does not blame him - he must be surprised. “Dimitri. I do not know what kind of message that would send,” he says finally.

“He has hurt your people. And those who have put him in charge of Duscur,” namely, Rufus. Probably with Cornelia’s pointing hand, too, “are already dead and will not bear the responsibility. But Kleiman can. And will.”

Dedue places a hand on the table. “What do you have in mind?”

“Like I said, that will be for your people to decide.” Dimitri watches Dedue, but he still looks wary. Uncertain. “I will be happy to appoint someone from Faerghus to observe the trial and confirm its legitimacy to any lords that would question it. But I would like for Duscur to carry it out.”

Dedue frowns again. “But your family…”

“Is dead.” Dimitri still sees them. It changes nothing. “I would not gain anything from passing judgement.”

Dedue does not speak, but Dimitri can see him thinking. Imagining the possible futures, perhaps.

If only he could show Dedue what he sees.

“Dedue,” Dimitri begins; waits until their eyes meet. “I know what it feels like. To live without closure.” To be constantly aware of the fact. “If this is the way to offer at least some of it to your people, then this is what must be done. And this is what I want, too,” he adds. It is not important - this is about the people of Duscur, not him - but evidently it is something Dedue would like to hear.

After a long pause of consideration, Dedue gives him a slow nod.

“Thank you, Dimitri. I will send a bird so that they may prepare for the trial.”

*

Another moon passes as they slowly settle deeper into their roles. The fit is too tight in some places, too loose in others, but they grit their teeth and make do. 

Dimitri knights Ingrid - with the post-war commotion, her father does not have the time to throw her at potential grooms anyway. She is quick to hand-pick Dimitri’s Winged Guard and whip them into shape, jumping at every rumour of unrest to test their mettle in skirmishes and spending much of her time near the border to help out Ashe. 

It is frowned upon, Dimitri knows - for many reasons but also for the king’s  _ guard _ being away from the capital - but he can understand Ingrid’s desire to be as far away from Galatea as possible. And frankly, quelling the border unrest is a much better use of her skill and time rather than endlessly circling the sky over the palace grounds.

Mercedes takes over one of the hospitals in Fhirdiad and builds it up until it sprawls over almost a full block, with her former battalion taking up the task of instructing numerous volunteers. Annette arrives from Enbarr and gets to reinstating the Royal School of Sorcery that has suffered heavily during the war; Sylvain is staying in Enbarr for now but promises to be back in Faerghus within a moon.

Dedue leaves for Duscur again - now as an official middle man between it and Faerghus - and soon sends news of Kleiman’s trial: the decision was to seize his personal assets and pour them into Duscur’s restoration efforts, and the man himself has been put to community work, to help rebuild what he has spent so much time ruining. 

Dedue is attentive and diligent with his duties to his land whether he is in Duscur or Fhirdiad - and will likely do a great job as an ambassador, once Dimitri completes all the necessary steps to give Duscur its independence back, should he not wish to return there for good. The thought is bittersweet - but though Dimitri would be sad to go on without Dedue’s steady presence by his side, his heart cannot help swelling with pride and joy for his friend.

Dimitri’s every day is full to the brim as he is pulled in a dozen different directions at once. There are petitions to address, and grievances to settle, and a portrait to be sat for - the artist, an elderly man from Charon, already grumbles a lot about how Dimitri was not there soon enough for it to be painted in time for his first coronation, so the second one will have to do.

And then there are dinners that are spent talking rather than eating, and reports that require his response, and overseeing the arduous process of rebuilding, and the endless stream of paperwork from Lorenz and Ferdinand. Dimitri’s every day is so full that he has to ask his assistant, a woman named Cholchis, to always assume that he does not remember what he is supposed to be doing at any given moment, because keeping so many things in mind at once proves to be an impossible task. 

As for Felix - well. Dimitri realizes he does not actually know much about Felix’s regular day. He knows about Felix’s work, of course, and his rigorous training regime, and his correspondence with Rodrigue - Felix sure complains about  _ that  _ quite a bit - and they dine together often enough, but what he does outside the walls of the palace is a mystery to Dimitri.

It is not like he has to know, of course. Felix is entitled to his own time - Goddess knows that Dimitri understands how little of it they get these days.

*

“Did we not have the meeting with the fountain builders today?” Dimitri asks. The headache is nestling in his temples today, and he grinds his teeth to push it back.

It is a warm Saturday morning - too warm for the early Red Wolf Moon, especially in Fhirdiad, but a queen’s summer has stretched over the past couple of weeks with its sun-filled, deceiving promise of heat even as the stark shadows bring out the cold truth of the late autumn.

“No, sire,” Cholchis checks something in her folder, though it does not seem like she needs to. “We received word just now that Lord Thelion has been unavoidably detained. Something about,” she frowns in distaste, “ _ furniture _ in the Market Square fountain.”

Dimitri wonders if he wants to know and decides that he does not.

“Very well,” he says. The sudden negative space of having nothing to do and nowhere to hurry is jarring. “Is there anything we can address instead?”

Cholchis adjusts her thick glasses. “I took the liberty of asking Sir Wainefort if he would continue working on your portrait, but apparently the light is wrong, since the sessions usually take place in the afternoon.” She flips through a few pages and hums. “The petitioning won’t start until after lunch. It looks like you have the morning off, sire.”

A morning off.

Huh.

It catches Dimitri so sharply off-guard that he does not even know how to fill the sudden free time. He ends up changing out of his stiff official clothes in favour of something not quite as constricting and with less gold thread and heads vaguely in the direction of training grounds - staying cooped up for too long makes him itch in his own skin.

And it is on the way there that he runs into Felix, which should not be surprising in the slightest.

What  _ is  _ surprising is that Felix does not seem to be heeding the call of steel and fresh wood shavings even in such close proximity.

He is dressed to go out, and he looks - the best word for it would probably be ‘secretive’, and maybe Dimitri is bored, or looking for pointers, or - something else - because for once, he decides to ask.

“Where are you going?” he  _ was  _ aiming for casual, but what comes out of his mouth decidedly is not. Dimitri presses his lips together.

“What is it to you?” Felix retorts, defensive, before the same thought seems to cross his mind and they both pause, contemplating the accidental mess between them.

So much for asking.

Dimitri pushes through it first. “My apologies, I did not mean to make it sound like an interrogation.”

“Whatever,” Felix quips. Then, quieter, “I’m going to an orphanage.”

An orphanage?

Dimitri leafs through the agenda in his mind. Were they planning something for today? A tour? No, surely he would have been reminded.

Which leaves the mystery unsolved.

“Oh? But why…”

“Do you wanna come with me or not,” Felix says to a spot somewhere over Dimitri’s shoulder. His ears are tinged pink.

It  _ is _ very smart of Felix, to use their accidental time off like this. Dimitri still has not had the chance to make a proper round of the city - which should be laughable after so much time spent in Fhirdiad, but he has been unspeakably busy - and with the financial support system still only being resurrected from the ashes, he has little hope that his apparent lack of attention has gone unnoticed.

Dimitri winces. He really should have thought of this sooner.

“Of course I do - Felix, this is a great idea, it is really long overdue to visit with the orphanages and see…”

Felix groans. “No, stop, don’t make this a big deal.” He holds up a hand when Dimitri opens his mouth to disagree. “Mercedes has been dispatching volunteers to help out in places, remember?”

“Oh.” Dimitri does not. Another thing that has slipped his mind while he was not looking, gone so quietly that he did not even notice its absence.

“Yeah, well,” Felix starts walking towards the exit, and Dimitri has no choice but to follow. “She has. There’s only so much you can do in a day, so don’t go spiraling over this. They won’t care for visits on top of the help they’re getting.”

Dimitri does not necessarily agree, but a different thought takes priority.

“So why  _ are _ you going there?” he asks.

Felix shrugs, way too casually, as he stares straight ahead. “It’s - a social call.”

“Oh? Someone you know?”

“Yeah.” Felix seems to be regretting inviting Dimitri along, which only stokes his curiosity. “Haven’t had the time to check up on them since we got back.”

“Well then,” Dimitri smiles. “Please, lead the way.”

Felix sighs in what sounds like resignation.

Outside, Felix deflects Dimitri’s initial questions about the orphanage - which is to say, he does not respond at all, glaring into the middle distance to the point where passersby, while certainly recognizing the King and his Advisor, think twice about potentially approaching them. 

Even though Dimitri has to be at the palace most of the time, he spends quite a lot of it listening to whoever comes to seek the audience, and so people generally know what he looks like from that even if his profile on the new run of coins does not bear much resemblance. 

And if even  _ that _ is not enough of a giveaway, he and Felix are trailed by two armed guards not too far behind - and one of them carries an extra lance for Dimitri. Not that he expects to use it, but - well...

Dimitri pushes the thought forcefully out of his mind, determined to enjoy the unexpected walk. It is not often that he gets to simply  _ go _ somewhere, on foot, even with the guards, and after so many years spent ceaselessly wandering the forced idleness buries a buzzing feeling somewhere under his skin.

They walk long enough that they find themselves on the outskirts of the city, still within the outer wall but clearly within sight of it. The buildings around them change, grow ramshackle and old, some permanently scarred with burn marks while the others look too new to be constructed at any point before the liberation of Fhirdiad.

It will take longer than just a few months to undo the long years of starved neglect, the two battles that have been waged in these very streets. Dimitri’s heart twists helplessly all the same.

At least the homelessness initiative seems to have done its job. During the war, many have lost their homes, while many houses stood empty after the fighting claimed its sacrifice. Dedue and Ashe came to Dimitri with a project of combining the two, and in the face of the coming winter this was probably the best decision Dimitri has made in a while.

The overall process is still anything but smooth, of course. Everything hurts, the country hurts, the  _ continent _ hurts when it is supposed to be healing, but it is still so early - there is still so much to be cut open and drained before it can be stitched together again. So much to do.

They turn a corner, and the sight of the narrow street suddenly aligns with a sketch of a memory - Dimitri recognizes the area, there should be a monastery here somewhere, what was its name? A square building with a courtyard and a big cathedral, almost as old as Fhirdiad itself. A school for war monks, possibly; Dimitri does not remember it functioning as an orphanage.

Judging by the sounds, a small crowd must be following them now, kept at a distance by the guards - idle onlookers enjoying the gift of warmth on a Saturday. Dimitri cannot fault them for seeking entertainment, but finds himself walking just a little but faster, the back of his neck prickling with discomfort. Felix catches his eye for a moment but says nothing, easily matching his stride.

The monastery stretches out to their right, and Dimitri cranes his neck to look at the pale limestone walls and the carved gargoyles along the top, the dome of the cathedral peeking out from the other end of the building. What  _ is _ it called? Seiros...Seiros something...

Felix marches on stiff legs right up to the entrance - it is modest, definitely not the main one - and almost knocks into Dimitri as he changes his course without warning.

A man greets them on the steps, no doubt alerted to their arrival by the excited chatter of the crowd. He looks older than Dimitri, maybe in his late thirties or so. He is tall, with long blond hair pulled back into a braid, and soft features that could almost be called delicate.

_ Everything _ is soft about him - except for the ugly diagonal gash on his chest, the pale shine of bone in the wreckage. The steely look in his eyes that melts away together with the blood.

Dimitri has seen this before. Still does - every survivor is marked by the touch of death from the times when it got close enough to grab. But it stands so at odds with the man’s serene demeanor that Dimitri’s eye catches on it.

Children spill out of the opened door - maybe four or five, but Dimitri does not have time to take a look at them because they immediately crowd behind the man’s skirts as he descends the steps, curious faces and tiny hands fisted in the fabric. The man almost misses a step as one of them bumps into him, but rights himself in time, looking back for a moment to murmur something to the children, a hand resting softly on cowlicked hair.

“Your Majesty,” he greets Dimitri with a bow once they are level - the children trip over themselves in a hurry to do the same, a litter of kittens mimicking a cat. He turns to Felix next with his brow cocked, a brief noise of contemplation escaping him in the pause. “Lord Felix.”

Right, Felix did say it was a social call.

The man’s words almost sound like a question, and Felix scoffs.

“Please. I’m not about to start caring for honorifics.” He jerks his chin towards Dimitri. “Dimitri doesn’t, either.”

“That is true,” he confirms and feels a smile pull at his lips when the little ones peek from around the man. One of them, a girl with a tiny braid, squeaks and hides again - the others dare venture farther out. 

The man hums. “As you wish. My name is Riviera - welcome to the monastery of Seiros the Luminous. Please, come inside.”

With a nod to the guards, Dimitri follows. It is cool indoors, the limestone walls a vigilant shelter against the lingering heat.

It is, however, also very noisy, the sounds taking stabs directly at his brain.

There is no antechamber, and the doors open right into a big room that is so  _ packed _ with children that Dimitri finds himself afraid of stepping on someone by incident - the blur that comes from their less fortunate lives certainly does not help.

The children are laughing and playing, some sitting at the long tables, others right on the faded carpets; the stone walls are almost completely concealed by bookcases and slightly lopsided brightly-coloured tapestries. There are several monks obviously trying to keep peace; one of them sits on the floor, surrounded by a small group as she teaches the children to sew.

Some of the monks obviously recognize Dimitri - and Felix - and get somewhat alarmed, but quickly look away after Riviera silently gestures at them to carry on as they were. It seems to be safe to assume that he is the one running the place.

“So, to what do we owe the pleasure, if I may ask?” Riviera asks once the front doors close, sheltering them from the crowd outside and subsequently plunging them into a much more boisterous one.

“I wish to be more invested in the life of places like yours,” Dimitri replies easily - it is the truth, after all. “It would pain me to give off the impression that your work goes unappreciated by the Crown.”

Riviera’s expression shifts in a minute wrinkle of - confusion? - but he smoothes it out quickly.

“We are grateful, my lord,” he responds and turns to Felix. “I assume…?”

“Yeah. Where,” Felix grunts, still oddly moody.

Riviera smiles - and Dimitri has known him for all of five minutes, but the expression looks terribly like fondness. “Mhm. Courtyard.”

Felix nods his thanks, throws one last glance at Dimitri, and strides away without another word. He seems to know his way around.

“I was not aware Felix had friends here until today,” Dimitri says, and Riviera shakes his head.

“That does sound like Felix, doesn’t it? Always so secretive. Anyway, please, allow me to show you around.”

Dimitri evens out the sudden and powerful pinch of jealousy at Riviera’s casual conduct, realizing he does not know that much about Felix’s friends outside their small circle.

But it is also none of his business.

They start walking down a wide corridor, the morning sun spilling in soft streams through the eastern windows. 

The double doors to the rooms on their right have been taken off the hinges, turning the rooms into a more open communal area. Inside, children are playing or reading or just plain running around, brimming with unbridled energy. Riviera explains the functions of the rooms - classes, rest, playtime - before pausing briefly at the entrance to one of them to converse quietly with a monk evidently tasked to watch over it.

“I admit I was not aware that the orphanage was...such a prominent part of the monastery,” Dimitri confesses once Riviera finishes his talk.

“It  _ is _ a relatively recent development, my lord,” Riviera concedes after they resume the walk. “The War Order of Seiros resided here before the occupation began, as I’m sure you know. Now, you are looking at the last surviving member of its original crop. But I will not bore you with the story.”

Dimitri turns to catch sight of Riviera and looks forward again as soon as he does, not wanting to swivel his head, just enough to see something bitter pass through Riviera’s features, snagging shortly on the corners of his mouth.

“Please do bore me,” Dimitri asks. “I still have much to learn about the events that transpired in Fhirdiad during my - absence,” a single point of coldness prickles the back of his neck, like an icy finger pressing into his vertebrae, “and your account would doubtlessly help me fill in more gaps.”

It feels shameful to admit this - should probably be unthinkable to do so before a virtual stranger, but Riviera does not betray any surprise or judgement. None of his silhouettes do. Dimitri allows some of the tension to bleed out of him in a thin soundless spill of air from his lungs.

Their footsteps echo from the stone floor for a few seconds, braiding effortlessly into the noises of the monastery.

“Very well, my lord,” Riviera speaks finally. “Let us move to my office, it can get very lively on the ground floor.”

Riviera’s office would be a spacious room, were it not lined with bookcases and filled with stacks upon stacks of wooden chests. The shelves are overflowing with papers, and one of the chests is open, revealing even more of the same - and for a moment, Dimitri commiserates.

A strange shape looms in the back of the room, wedged into a corner and half-concealed by a bookcase. Something as tall as a man, covered with a quilt, and as Riviera invites Dimitri to sit in a chair obviously reserved for visitors, his angle of view changes and he catches a glimpse of a wicked-looking battle axe, a shadow of something blood-splattered and grieving, and there is a deafening hum in Dimitri’s ears before he forces himself to look away.

A tiny brazier sits in the corner of the room, with a tinier teapot nestled in the pulsating coals, and Riviera checks it quickly before offering Dimitri tea. The smell is unfamiliar, tangy and smoky and strangely sharp under a thin veil of something floral, and Dimitri looks into the carefully cradled cup, intrigued, but whatever gave the tea its fragrance has been filtered out of it.

“Sundance praises,” Riviera explains as he lowers himself in his own chair, evidently having noticed Dimitri’s confusion. “Uhh - we call it ‘sourwood’ in Fódlan. I was led to discover that it makes a great tea.”

Dimitri inhales the scent again, even more curious now. Sourwood is an invasive weed in western Fódlan, growing originally in - Dagda? It must be Dagda. To brew it for tea...

It tastes like hot water, of course. Dimitri suppresses the predictable pang of disappointment - at least warm drinks tend to cushion his headaches somewhat.

“Let me get back to you on this next time I meet with the western lords,” he smiles anyway. “Maybe we have finally found a way to deal with this bane.”

They sit in a companionable silence for a few minutes, drinking their tea. The monastery breathes around them. Voices of children and adults glide around the stone walls.

“You have quite a lot of people here,” Dimitri remarks. “It cannot be easy, managing such a busy place.”

“Spoken from experience, I assume?” Riviera teases him, a crinkle to his eyes.

Dimitri snorts before he can stop himself, and his eyes widen in mortification. But Riviera only smirks in good humour and lifts the cup to hide his mouth.

“There weren’t always so many,” he says after taking a sip. “My order, among others, was sent out south after the initial announcement of war, to provide support at the budding frontlines.” Riviera tilts his cup, watching the tea lap at the glaze. Dimitri glances at the shape of the battle axe. “Once Fhirdiad was empty bar the most basic defence, Cornelia the Usurper showed her true loyalties and took over the city - but you knew that, of course.”

He does not look to Dimitri for confirmation, though Dimitri  _ did _ know that much. But it still settles differently on his chest, hearing about it from someone who has lived and fought through it.

“We drew lots, and I had to stay behind with a few of my brethren,” Riviera continues. “The ones who left...did not come back, though at that point I couldn’t have known that, obviously. After the announcement of your - hm,” he pauses, brows knit in discomfort.

“The execution,” Dimitri prompts. An unyielding coldness presses against his back. He breathes through it.

Riviera glances at him with pale green eyes - almost the same colour as Byleth’s, but warmer, edging towards young grass blades rather than mint. “Indeed. That, and Cornelia’s betrayal - there were riots in the city, it was not...an easy time. I’ll - allow me to top off your cup, my lord.”

Riviera steps away to the brazier with the smallest of tremors to his serene composure. Dimitri does not watch him until he returns, giving him some privacy.

“So we joined the fray the moment the tensions broke into violence and lent our healing efforts whenever we could as loyalist Fhirdians fought imperial soldiers and supporters who have long infiltrated the city,” Riviera continues after he sits back down. Steam rises from his cup, leaving soft smudges on the lines of his face. “The few who fought by my side fell prey to the violence. I am not sure why the Goddess has chosen to spare  _ me.” _

The wide, ugly cut stains his blouse, darkening the white linen to near-black. 

“So you returned to the monastery?” Dimitri prompts carefully when Riviera falls silent.

He perks up a little at the words. “Yes. I was quick to realize how dire the need was for a safe haven amidst all the confusion and chaos. For many - but children became especially vulnerable. So having a big empty monastery on the outskirts and away from most of the fighting and not using it seemed like a terrible waste.” Riviera smiles faintly. “I grew up in the streets of Fhirdiad, myself, before the order took me in. Though the war never came to our doorstep in those years, I know how trying it can get.”

Dimitri looks at Riviera, considering his age again. He must have a dozen or so years on Dimitri, maybe a few more - which means he was born during Queen Meinir’s rule - and she did always keep her battles well away from the capital. But it does not mean that the war did not slip insidiously in through the cracks.

Dimitri understands it a bit better now, Riviera’s obvious drive to help. The kind of compassion that is born in people from knowing the pain for themselves.

A question keeps nagging at him, and he was hoping he would not have to ask it outright, but luck does not seem to be on his side.

“So how do you know Felix?”

If Riviera is surprised by the sudden change of subject, he does not show it.

“It wasn’t I but my husband who found him first,” he speaks after mulling it over for a moment. “Lon and I have only just started turning the monastery into a shelter - he and I actually met when I had to patch him up after a bad encounter. As for Felix - perhaps he’d prefer to tell you that story himself.” Riviera pauses, looking into his cup as his eyebrows knit together. “But he carried...a deep wound in his heart. He was angry. Lost, perhaps. I offered him guidance where I could.” Here, the frown softens into a smile again; Riviera looks away, drawn to his recollections. “He wasn’t very receptive at first, but eventually I got through to him, I think.”

Dimitri’s sight blurs and shifts to a memory that feels so far away now both in time and place when it is anything but: Felix, healing him on the roof of the castle, warm hands cupped around his elbow with Faith magic cocooning the pain without the need for a sigil.

So this is who taught him that. This is who looked after Felix.

“If the orphanage ever needs funds or manpower or anything, the Сrown is ready to provide as much as possible,” Dimitri speaks, managing to keep his voice steady against the tide of gratitude. He was planning to offer it anyway, after all. “Of course, we are already rebuilding the support system that the orphanages benefited from five years ago - but if there is anything extra you need…” Dimitri waits for Riviera to meet his eye. “Please just ask.”

Riviera tilts his head. “Forgive me if I overstep, my lord, but there’s no need for the guilt that I feel you might be carrying. We are blessed to be out of the woods, especially with the volunteer help. The monastery has managed so far - people are kinder and more resilient than you might think.” His gaze flicks towards the window. “And the support of Fraldarius has certainly helped to keep us afloat through some of the worst times.”

Dimitri manages to conceal his surprise even as the wave of it presses against the inside of his skin. Fraldarius? He knows for  _ sure  _ that the Duchy barely had enough resources to support its own people and the war on its western front - was already running on borrowed time, in fact, when they retook Fhirdiad - so it is doubtful that it would have the money to spend on a monastery in the heart of occupied territory.

He does not point it out, however.

“I forgive you,” he says instead with his eyebrows raised. “But I do insist.”

Riviera studies his face, and his mouth is stretched into something too good-hearted to be called a smirk.

“You are kind,” he says, accepting with a slow, deliberate nod.

They are quiet as they finish their tea, but the silence does not feel strained. Something about Riviera puts Dimitri at ease laughably quickly.

With no conversation to focus on, Dimitri lets his mind wander and finds his thoughts pulled towards the numerous voices filtering in from the outside. The window opens west, and he can glimpse the walls of the opposite wing - so the voices must be coming from the courtyard.

He wonders if Felix is there somewhere. If he can pick out his voice among what sounds like dozens.

Riviera seems to notice the shift in his attention.

“Would you like to check up on Felix?” he offers with a smile that seems too knowing. “He and Lon must still be outside - maybe by now we can persuade them to take a break.”

Dimitri sits up straighter, suddenly aware of the passage of time. The sun does not blind the western window yet, so it cannot have been  _ that _ long, but…

“What do they do there?” he asks.

Riviera rises from his chair and picks up the cups, placing them on a small tray balanced on one of the chests. “Lon teaches children to spar, and when Felix visits it can get...intense, let’s put it this way. They lose track of time so easily - but you know how it is with them.” Riviera smiles in quiet mirth. “It’s why we love them.”

Something shrill runs through Dimitri like a zap of lightning. “Pardon me?” he manages.

Riviera glances at him in confusion before comprehension dawns. “Oh,” he says eloquently, his eyes wide in faint alarm before he schools his expression. “ _ Oh. _ My deepest apologies, my lord. Obviously, I misunderstood.” 

Dimitri looks helplessly away, his face on fire.

They leave the office, making their way down the stairs and outside. The warm air that smells deceptively like summer greets them, lathered generously by the noon sun.

“I need to check in with people on cooking duty,” Riviera says once they step outside. “You will stay for lunch, I’m sure?”

Dimitri considers refusing - for it feels like encroachment, him taking food from those who actually need it - but something tells him that refusal would make a worse offence.

“We would be honoured,” he says, and Riviera’s smile grows wider.

“Excellent. Then we shall eat as soon as everyone is herded indoors and convinced to wash up. I’ll go that way - but if you take this path, it will bring you to our training grounds.”

There are rows and rows of vegetable patches before them: tomato stalks hanging onto wooden rods, heavy bellies of cabbages and pumpkins, lance-formations of asparagus. Dimitri recognizes a few runes burned into the low wooden fence surrounding the patches - the same ones guarding Mother’s herbal garden, though fewer in number and not as ferocious. 

He picks his way carefully among the greenery until it is replaced with gnarly, knotted trunks of apple trees. He minds his head here, but still manages to get smacked on the temple with a low-hanging fruit. The trees look old, almost ancient - they were probably planted back when the War Order still resided here. Dimitri thinks he might even recognize the breed - one of those traditionally used for cider.

The training grounds, as it turns out, lie on the other side of the apple tree garden. The space is full of people: the children are sparring with each other, observing someone else when they are not, or just enjoying the sunlight; the monks are watching over them; a few have enlisted the help of the children to hang up laundry on the edge of the open patch.

In the middle of it, something big is going on, and Dimitri’s eye is drawn towards the centre of the commotion on a predictable hunch. Felix is in there, kicking up clouds of dust as he is sparring with several older children at once. Wood clacks on wood in a hurried staccato over the cheers of the onlookers. Some of them look to be too young to join an all-out brawl, and others are grumbling and healing each other with careful hands, and Dimitri guesses they have already tried their luck.

But Dimitri notices that only in passing as he finds himself observing Felix, who is almost a blur of stabs and twists, with his lips pulled back in an angry, focused grin. 

Dimitri has trained and fought beside him enough to know his style by now, the seamless blend of forms and tricks, but watching him never ceases to be fascinating. Here is a swing they both learned as children under Eve, here is a sidestep Felix picked up from training with Byleth - here is something particularly brutal that he must have learned during the war - though he, of course, pulls back before he can actually bruise anyone’s body worse than their pride.

One by one, the children are picked out: some losing their grip on their weapons, others leaving to huff and heal. But, Dimitri notices, nobody seems truly upset or angry - not in the way that can’t be easily soothed. If anything, they look...excited, and pleased, and weary but still determined to learn.

Felix is loved, here.

After the last child standing - a girl with closely-shorn hair and scarred hands - finally relents and stabs the point of her wooden sword into the ground in a gesture of yielding, Felix’s snarl relaxes into a satisfied expression, lips closing over bared teeth.

“Not bad,” he glances around, over the heads of the children, and some of them visibly preen under the praise. “You’ve been training them well.”

A short huff of laughter somewhere to Dimitri’s right, and he turns his head to see a man he has not noticed before. He pushes himself away from the apple tree he has been leaning against, stepping out into the sunlight. He looks to be Riviera’s age, although of a darker complexion - although, again, not as dark as the people of Duscur are. He might be - Dagdan?

It takes Dimitri some effort to truly see him past everything  _ else,  _ past the times when he is - oh, waterlogged and frozen, his lashes encrusted in sea salt, or mangled worse than Riviera, so Dimitri stops trying to pick out all the changing details and focuses on the bigger picture.

The man kind of looks like Felix, in a sense, with his stance of a warrior and build of a swordsman. His footing is firm and sure, and his eyes are keen even as he projects a relaxed aura - and, well, the subtly curved sword sheathed at his hip is a dead giveaway.

Several random things click together at once in Dimitri’s head. So this must be Lon then, Riviera’s husband and the Dagdan man who taught Felix things like running up walls, apparently.

Lon’s sword hisses as he unsheathes it. He shrugs loosely into a stance, bringing the sword up to his shoulder and parallel to the ground. The children around him murmur in excitement, scramble to move over and clear up some more space.

Felix smirks and tilts his head, hands off the wooden sword to grab one of his own, and the next second the duel begins - and it is even more obvious now how much Felix must have learned from Lon. Their steps are graceful as they dance around each other, fluid and swift, and every strike is matched - and even the visions branching out from them like peacock tails coincide without a single hitch.

The duel ends as soon as it begins - a demonstration, an intricate handshake of steel rather than a real sparring session. The children whoop and applaud, obviously thrilled to watch them, as the two men still and bow formally to one another. 

Dimitri has almost forgotten himself, pulled into the trance of their dance, but comes back to abruptly now that it is finished. Lon glances towards him for the first time as Felix prods the children into storing the weapons, but before Dimitri can take a step in their direction, something dives out of the blackness on his right side, barreling into his leg.

“Ow!”

Dimitri steps cautiously back in alarm and looks down. A boy is rubbing the side of his head, mussing up his chestnut hair, and glares up at him, like it is solely Dimitri’s fault that he is now in this predicament. Though how on earth he could have missed someone of Dimitri’s height, he would not know.

“Careful there,” he says, eye darting around the child to see if there is something more than a bump on the head. “Are you alright?”

“Who are you?” the boy glares up at Dimitri, almost as if in accusation. “What’s your name?”

Dimitri might have just heard a monk choke on a gasp somewhere behind him.

He raises his eyebrows. The puffed up cheeks, still round with baby fat, take some threat out of the put out expression.

“My name is Dimitri,” he offers with a smile.

The boy places his hands on his waist, forces his shoulders back. “No, that’s  _ my _ name!” He stomps his tiny foot on the word.

Dimitri blinks as the ground shifts beneath him. It cannot be, surely.

There cannot be children named after him. That would be a most ludicrous thought.

People  _ have _ been known to name their newborns after a new monarch would ascend the throne - Dimitri is pretty sure he has met a Lambert or twenty on his trips to the city back when he was a child himself. When a ruler-to-be would already prove with their deeds to be just and kind even before the crown was passed on to them, the people’s love and adoration welcomed them happily to the throne. But he never could have imagined…

But no, something does not fit. The child is not an infant. The child is…

“How,” Dimitri clears his throat. “How old are you?”

The boy -  _ Dimitri _ \- puffs out his chest. “I am five years and four moons old!” he boasts.

That makes no sense. That makes no sense…

Dimitri does the math in his mind, keenly aware of the piercing brown stare pinning him to the sky. The child’s age - this would place his birth soon after…

The execution.

Oh.

The boy’s frown turns into a sour grimace. “Ugh, it’s  _ alright, _ you can use it for now, just don’t -  _ cry _ or anything. It’s my middle name anyway - I’m Kieran Dimitri Luminous!” he announces proudly. “But  _ friends  _ usually call me Dimi. Sometimes Kiera. Or Kay-Dee. Or…”

Dimitri’s attention is wrenched from the boy as he searches helplessly for Felix, finds him just as he happens to glance in his direction as well. Felix must notice the stricken look on his face, because he hands off an armful of swords to one of the older boys and approaches swiftly.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, looking between Dimitri and - another Dimitri - and seemingly not noticing anything worth the panic.

Dimitri looks down at the boy - who perks up at Felix’s arrival, all ire forgotten - and back up at Felix.

“His name is Dimitri,” he pleads.

He watches Felix go along the same thought path he has just walked himself. Watches him arrive at the same conclusion.

“Oh shi- _shoot,”_ Felix mutters. “Right, there are…yeah.”

Dimitri almost sways as he catches the tail end of that - was Felix meaning to say that there are  _ more? here? _ \- but the boy, who has been trying to get Felix’s attention and has by now grown annoyed at being ignored, pulls on the loose tail of his shirt and repeats his name in that monotonous way children are prone to falling into.

“Felix. Felix. Felix. Felix. Felix.”

“Dimi,  _ what,  _ I’m having a conversation,” he frowns down at the child, and for a moment Dimitri, briefly reeling from the sound of the nickname leaving Felix’s lips, is struck by how well their scowls match, but then Felix picks him effortlessly up, hoisting him onto his shoulder. The boy - Dimitri  _ still _ cannot find it in himself to even think his name - squeaks in delight.

Riviera has come back out to the courtyard at some point, and Dimitri catches sight of him next to Lon as they converse quietly, leaning in towards each other. They are standing with their backs to Dimitri, but he can still glimpse the curves of their smiles.

Dimitri looks at them, with children milling about, some of the smaller ones already latching onto Riviera’s skirt like they did on the steps of the monastery, others tugging on Lon’s hands. Looks back at Felix and the serious, attentive way he is listening to the boy on his shoulder, standing so close to Dimitri that he can almost guess the outline of his body heat. It is - very tempting to pretend that they are the same.

But of course, they are nothing alike. The way Lon’s features betray nothing but aloofness and cool disinterest until he unsheathes his sword and his whole being seems to come alive, brimming with single-minded determination - or until he looks at Riviera and his expression thaws into something almost doting in its affection; the way Riviera obviously dedicates his entire self, body and mind, to providing safety for the weak - until his hand brushes Lon’s and his mild smile blooms brighter and warmer… 

If anything, they remind Dimitri of Dedue and Mercedes. He  _ really _ wishes their dear friends would finally do something about this tentative connection between them.

But hearts can be so oblivious.

Lunch is served, and as everyone takes their places at the long tables and benches, Dimitri is reminded of the academy, especially with how much cajoling it takes in some cases to wrangle the children into eating their greens. Of course, he cannot say anything about the taste of the food - a creamy soup, the vegetables for which seem to have come from the garden in the courtyard - but it looks and smells good, and most look happy enough to eat it.

The attempt to hold polite conversation over food is cut short when they realize what a lost cause it would be to try to hear anything over the noise of two-something hundred boisterous children in a confined space. But once the lunch is over and the chores are distributed and the noise levels grow manageable in the atmosphere of sated drowsiness, Dimitri checks in with Riviera again before they leave, reminding of the offer to help if the need arises before the welfare system is steady again.

Riviera smiles, and nods, and tells Dimitri that he is welcome within the walls of the monastery whenever he wishes to visit, with or without Felix. 

Clouds are coagulating over the sun when the two of them leave and are rejoined by Dimitri’s guards. But the air is still warm, heated over the cobblestones and trapped between them and the clouds, and Dimitri is in no desire to hurry, part of him loathe to bring this brief break to an end even as his mind already turns towards the busy schedule that awaits him back at the palace.

But there is still something he does not know, not exactly. And maybe this is the closing window in which he might still get an answer.

“So how did you meet them?” Dimitri asks. Takes his chance. “You seem pretty close.”

A slight grimace of discomfort marrs Felix’s face, but Dimitri waits instead of immediately backtracking. If Felix truly does not wish to tell him, Dimitri will definitely know.

“You know about the riots, right?” Felix finally speaks and halts, waiting for Dimitri to nod. “I arrived in Fhirdiad as it was all breaking out. Wanted to take out as many fuckers as I could. I tried to…”

He pauses again, the muscle working in his temple. One of his silhouettes shakes its head, others look away. 

“I ran into Lon as he was defending a gaggle of brats from the imperials. I helped, we brought them to the monastery. It wasn’t a real orphanage at that point yet - Riviera was still expecting the rest of his order to return. But there were beds, and food, and - whatever, so he and Lon were taking people in. I stuck around for a bit until the riots were suppressed and went underground, and checked up on them whenever I could sneak into Fhirdiad.”

Dimitri considers his words as Felix falls silent. It is strange to imagine Felix walking these very streets, streets Dimitri should have been walking, should have been defending…

Though, maybe, not quite as strange.

“Riviera mentioned you - assisted them financially,” Dimitri ventures.

Felix scoffs, a puff of air meant to ripple and muddle the too-transparent surface of water. “Of  _ course _ he’d say that. It was nothing. Not like Fraldarius had much to spare.”

Dimitri hums. “That is what I thought, too.”

They walk in silence for a minute, and Dimitri cannot help but smirk as Felix grows more and more agitated and eventually the dam breaks.

“ _ Fine, _ I - did mercenary work in the west, with Leonie and a few others,” he rolls his eyes so violently that Dimitri wonders how he keeps walking in a straight line. “Gave what we didn’t need to Riviera. It wasn’t a big  _ deal.” _

Goddess, Dimitri is so fond.

“Still, it seems to have helped,” he says, watching Felix’s bristling with amusement he cannot be bothered to suppress. “Thank you.” 

Felix huffs, brusque. “Whatever.”

Dimitri remembers something. “ _ And _ you got some Dagdan swordsmanship out of it, too!”

Another huff, though Dimitri can already see his hackles lowering at the mention - or at the change of topic. 

“Lon’s good. It was nice to have someone capable to spar with from time to time.”

Dimitri smiles and stops pushing, granting him reprieve. His five years of wanderings were nothing but misery and resignation and a bleary, woozy fury, with nobody but the ghosts for company, with every fleeting human company meaning only bloodbaths.

He probably would not care to know, back then, that Felix’s life was at least not so lonely. But he can be grateful for it now.

Riviera’s initiative has given Dimitri an idea, and so before the petitioning begins, Dimitri takes a moment to draft a letter to Byleth. Though it is in his plans to put more distance between the Crown and the Church, considering its strategic position in the middle of the continent, Faerghus is still the Holy Kingdom, and so he should at least ask Byleth’s opinion before ordering to convert half of the churches throughout the realm into orphanages and schools. The war has left many orphans - and as the churches are already dwellings of compassion and healing, it would only be a relatively minor shift anyway.

Byleth’s response comes quickly, with their sketched plan of encouraging a reconstructionist and revivalist movement for old, pre-imperial religions that existed in Fódlan thousands of years before the Goddess descended upon the continent, as well as providing an opportunity to grow for minor religions that have been beaten into the ground by the Church of Seiros.

_ ‘Fódlan’s strength has always been in its diversity,’ _ they write.  _ ‘And I do think it’s time we bring it back. _

_ ‘By which I mean - do as you please with the churches. If anyone gets opinionated, they may express those opinions directly to the Archbishop.’ _

Dimitri cannot help but smile at those lines. Looks like he and Claude are not the only ones with the intention of making waves.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cws for this chapter are alcohol consumption and, technically, dubious consent because of said alcohol consumption. :)

_ and it will be warm tonight  _

_ by the fires of heavenly lands _

The lords are not pleased with Dimitri’s new taxation plan, but winter is halfway through the door and Faerghus needs to be ready for it. Western lords take the brunt of the new plan, which acts basically as the main punishment for their actions during the war, as well as the way to even out what Adrestia has poured into them to support Cornelia’s cause.

The resources are scarce. They should make it through the winter, but it is going to be a tight fit. At least the Leicesteri lords are willing to wait until the war debt can be repaid, and the campaign in Hrym unearthed more stored away precious metals than anyone knew even existed. So in the end, it is mostly a matter of balancing taxes and trading - but then again, when was it anything else?

If resources are seemingly bursting out of Hrym, they look to be draining directly into the ground in Itha. It still has no lord of its own - Rufus died without a legitimate heir, and all of his bastard children seem to have vanished during the war. For the time being, it was placed under the jurisdiction of Blaiddyd, and the state of its paperwork never fails to give Dimitri an astounding headache.

One of the reasons for that headache, however, was a small box that a steward brought to Dimitri from Uncle’s estate outside of Itha’s capital. A laughably nondescript wooden object bursting with yellowed letters. The steward, a tired-looking old man who used to keep Uncle’s books, said that he looked inside and saw Stepmother’s name but promised to have digged no further - and the visions revealed to Dimitri that while sometimes he  _ did, _ in the end all he was interested in was going back to living his life, leaving the nonsensical games to the lords who never have anything better to do.

Cornelia was initially granted the title during the war - the correspondence must be hers, probably sent away to Itha for safe-keeping. And so the box stared at Dimitri, promising answers - the dark kind of answers that only dragged more questions into the light, like seawater monsters writhing on great hooks, incomprehensible and terrifying. 

He looked back at it, and contemplated the convulsing carcasses of visions, and ordered the box burned.

Whatever answers he would find there, they would bring him no peace. He has to look towards the future instead, and the habit is hard to break, but he is learning. He is learning.

But that is all irrelevant. Dimitri shakes off the gnawing memory and brings his attention back to the petitioner - while the state of Itha is no surprise at all, it is a small consolation for its people.

“We are afraid of freezing, Your Majesty.” The man is kneeling already, but he bows his head as well, in deference or in despair - possibly both. “Our village was razed to the ground, too close to the eastern front, and as soon as we rebuilt, it burned down during the queen’s summer - and with the high seat empty, nobody will loan us the money to rebuild again before the frost sets in.”

Dimitri puts his emotions firmly aside as he considers the man’s words. He looks underfed, haggard; his clothes are ill-fitting for the swell of northern winter, but the effort put into them is obvious - thin or no, they were his best choice for the King’s court, which is, in turn, his best chance to secure the survival of his village.

But what would help him here?

The Crown could pay for construction - a village would not cost much, relatively speaking, they can spare the amount.

Dimitri leans back in his throne and lets it play out in his mind, looks away with a frown when it comes to a dead end far too quickly.

The money is not the problem here - well, of course, it always is. But not the main problem. The village is a solitary one, in the scarcely populated area in the middle of the Itha Plains - a long way to the woods with only so much time before the roads are lost to the snow. And the Red Wolf Moon is already coming to an end.

If Dimitri gives them money, the villagers are going to freeze. If he gives them wood, has someone bring it from across the Itha River?

The bridge breaks, chilled wood made brittle over the freezing water. If the bridge breaks - the connection is severed - another village’s way to water is shut, their side of the river too jagged and with cliffs too abrupt to allow access, and then they have to thaw the snow instead, but the dead still linger in it, remnants of the summer battles, and…

Dimitri grinds his teeth, forcing away the foul images of the plague. The wood will not work either, then.

The man clears his throat. He is probably misunderstanding Dimitri’s frown. “Your Majesty - please…”

A guard throws Dimitri a questioning look, but Dimitri shakes his head. It is his own fault for worrying the man, and he bites back the useless urge to apologize. “Remind me the name of your village, please,” he says instead.

“Meyotha, sire,” the man responds, bowing again. “Like - like from the legend.”

Meyotha the Serpent-Slayer. Dimitri remembers that one. Remembers studying the maps just a few weeks ago, fighting to commit the new constellations to memory.

Where was it again? Meyotha the Serpent-Slayer - directly above the bend of Itha, then, a short distance to the north from there. Cutting the serpent’s neck - that is how he remembered.

The frontline was really close to that area. Why does it feel important?

There used to be a different village not too far away, its spot perfectly blank on Dimitri’s new maps. Deceptively clean, as if its brutal death could be erased so easily.

But it was, in a sense, was it not? The village -  _ what was its name -  _ was simply not there anymore after the imperials were driven out of the area.

Dimitri tilts his head a fraction, inspecting the sudden smell of wet earth, the stink of boredom and fear, the glisten of armour, over-oiled in uneasy idleness. 

Oh. The imperials went  _ underground. _ Took out the villagers and used the wood to build dugouts. Wanted to wait it out. Ended up running anyway - and now, nobody lives to know that the dugouts are still there, hidden from view.

Well, nobody except for Dimitri.

“Do you think your people can make it to…” What is the  _ name? _ And then, it comes to him.  _ The Serpent-Slayer and the Flutist.  _ “Savo?”

“Savo?” the man repeats, and his face falls. “Your Majesty, Savo is no more - no people, no houses... There’s nothing. They can’t help us.”

“There are empty dugouts,” Dimitri says. “You will have to build the chimneys - but other than that, they should be enough to wait out the winter. Afterwards, we will send help to restore Meyotha.” He nods to the scribe and hears the quill scratch as she takes a note.

The man sways on his knees, as if recovering from a physical blow. He looks dazed - this is not what he was expecting. “Sire - forgive me. There is nothing there. We checked - we looked for survivors.”

The man does not look old, but the grief lines of his face are too well-trodden. Something cold yawns open in Dimitri’s chest.

“There were none,” he agrees - confirms. Tries to parse out the visions. “Plan your journey to arrive there at noon. Then look for the darkest shadows. The soil sags there, somewhat.” That is not the only time they find the first dugout - but it is the surest one.

The man looks up at him, still bewildered - but whatever he sees when Dimitri holds his gaze seems to reassure him. 

“Thank you, sire,” he bows, touching his forehead to the carpet, then stands, then bows again. “May the Goddess be with you. Thank you.”

Dimitri gives him a deliberate nod, and the man walks away backwards, with a guard guiding him carefully by the elbow, until he reaches the exit from the hall.

Dimitri’s head is throbbing from the exertion, every pulse pressing against the tight hoop of his silver circlet. But it is still going to be at least a few hours, and so he straightens up again and allows himself a close-mouthed yawn.

People come to petition Dimitri almost every day, asking for money, for help, for protection. Sometimes it is easy to figure out what to do. Sometimes it seems impossible. And so came a point when Dimitri turned to the visions without even realizing in his search for answers, and so found the solution to yet another person’s problem.

It unnerved him, at first. And it is often not what people want to hear from their king, convinced that what they are asking for is what they need.

But the visions do not lie. They confuse and trap and blind Dimitri with headaches, but they do not lie.

He spreads himself thinner, too, well beyond the audience hall, until the salty waves lap at his awareness on all sides, sometimes even farther. Fódlan desperately needs peace, and Dimitri realizes early on that the most bloodless way to deal with a rebellion is to undo the rebellion before it has the chance to form. There are always the right strings to pull and the right people to address, and Dimitri hates these manipulations and does not always succeed, But he tries. By the Goddess, does he try.

It is beyond draining, of course, to the point where Dimitri sometimes no longer feels human at the end of a long day, but more of a specter, fraying at the edges into the air. 

His sleep is troubled too, moreso than it usually is. That is the foolish thing - although Dimitri has never thought about it consciously, apparently some naive part of him was hoping that Edelgard’s death would release him from his nightmares. From his ghosts. But it did neither, and the visions only make it worse.

But such is his work. Such is his duty to his people.

*

The moon of Dimitri’s birthday arrives suddenly, what feels like mere weeks after the coronation. He would not have even thought about it if not for a message from the Master of the Household, politely inquiring if His Majesty would have any particular wishes that should be relayed to the kitchen staff. A minute of befuddled pondering later, he remembers.

Dimitri fully intends to wave it off and just go on with his daily life; after all, the mound of work that needs to be done does not seem to grow any smaller, and they really should not be wasting neither time nor resources on something so frivolous. And in any case, he has not celebrated his birthday in years - he can easily continue doing so.

The court hears of his unceremonial dismissal, sputters and stares, and next thing he knows, a letter arrives from Annette telling him very sternly that, firstly, this is his  _ birthday _ and thus important by default, especially since he has not had a chance to celebrate it in so long, and secondly, that should be enough in itself, but since she knows it is not going to cut it for Dimitri, he still cannot argue with the morale boost that the holiday would provide.

_ ‘People are tired, Your Majesty. They’d love a reminder of what they are working towards, of joy and security.’ _

Dimitri cannot argue with that, indeed. And so, the court is appeased, the invitations are sent, and soon the palace is bustling with staff as they organize the rooms for guests and make preparations for the feast.

A letter from Sylvain informs Dimitri that this is a perfect opportunity for a class reunion, and that he will not take ‘no’ for an answer, especially since he has already shared this grand idea with everyone else and it really is too late to back out, and anyway, it is about time he comes back north. Dimitri rolls his eyes at the letter and pens his reply, conceding. 

It  _ would _ be nice to see everyone again: with the country slowly rising from the shambles, his friends have all been just as terribly busy as Dimitri himself, to the point where he barely sees even those who do currently live in Fhirdiad, like Mercedes and her hospital or Annette still working on ridding the stonework of the lingering Dark magic. And once Dedue starts spending more time in Duscur like they are planning, Dimitri cannot tell when the Blue Lions would all be able to meet in the same place again. If his birthday could be a reason for that…

Dimitri sends magpies and foot messengers, to confirm that Sylvain’s idea was not, in fact, just a mad raving of his, and proposing a date ten days before the actual birthday. He chooses an earlier date for two reasons: it would be nice to have an informal gathering, without needing to adhere to the bothersome and stiff court etiquette, and also this way he can save them the trouble of figuring out gifts for him, unless they decide to break the Faerghan custom and risk bringing bad luck upon the almost-king of the entire continent. Which they hopefully will not.

...They do. Well, most of them. In a way.

This is how after a relatively modest dinner Dimitri ends up in one of the smaller and less pompous drawing rooms, with Mercedes’ embroidered blanket folded neatly in his lap, a flame-bladed sword from Galatean forges, and an old and obviously well-read tome of chivalry tales from a very flustered Ashe.

“I did not know we were supposed to bring gifts anyway, so please accept this, I am very sorry,” he stutters out, bright-red, and will not take it back.

“I’m sorry, Ashe, we really should have told you how this works,” Annette pipes up from her chair to Dimitri’s right. She brought sweets for everyone, and now salutes with a glass of some unholy concoction that was Sylvain’s gift. “A very nice totally-not-related-to-any-birthdays get-together, Your Majesty!”

“Thank you, Ashe, I will cherish it greatly. And thank you, Annette, I hope this impromptu party was not too unexpected for any of you,” Dimitri salutes back and smiles. He has been outplayed, of course, but he can take it in good humour. “I truly am very glad to have you all here.”

“Hear, hear!” Sylvain very nearly avoids splashing his own drink; by now, his freckles are rendered invisible against the flush of his skin. “We should do this more often. Say, every moon. Nay! Every week!”

Next to him, Ingrid rolls her eyes so hard Dimitri briefly wonders how her head does not swivel right off. “Yeah, right. Usher in the drunkest era of Fódlan! We’ve earned it!”

A cheer goes up, and those who are not drunk enough yet on Sylvain’s fire hazard, get to work on catching up. Dedue does not participate, but seems to be perfectly content to listen to Mercedes’ agitated ramble about something that happened at work. Dedue is also one of the two people who did not good-naturedly bend the custom in order to bring Dimitri gifts.

Unbidden, Dimitri’s gaze moves to find Felix. He is perched on the arm of Sylvain’s chair and is drinking steadily, methodically, grimacing every time he throws back his glass. He drinks with the air of a man with demons to drown, and Dimitri frowns slightly, not knowing what to make of it.

On the other hand, he is not about to judge anyone for the way they choose to spend tonight. It is not his birthday party, after all.

The night arrives, unnoticed, and the fires are restoked with fresh crackly logs. Ever the ringleader, Sylvain cajoles people into a drinking game that appears to have way too many convoluted rules and involves, among other things, Ingrid’s gifted sword, several coins, and a ribbon graciously donated by Annette. Dimitri almost immediately gives up on trying to understand the whole thing and just drinks however much Sylvain and, inexplicably, Mercedes tell him to. It seems to be a lot more than he is supposed to, but who is he to argue?

Dimitri is definitely tipsy by now. The room swims just a little bit when he turns his head, and for once he is reasonably sure it is not because of the visions.

His heart warms at the sight of his friends, laughing and joking, for a moment more carefree than he has seen them in ages. All of them, wounded so deeply by everything they have lived through, and yet - and yet they are healing.

“That’s it, I’m done,” Felix suddenly announces, slamming his glass down on the low table and shooting up. He sways immediately, steadied by Sylvain’s hand on his hip. “I’m going  _ training. _ ”

A roar of laughter from everyone, so loud that Ingrid is roused from her drunken nap.

“Training? In the middle of the night? Felix, you won’t know a dummy from a real person!” Annette calls out to him, snatching her ribbon from Ashe to retie her hair. “You’ll stab someone! Or maybe yourself.”

“Then they deserve it!” Felix starts talking over her, but then the rest of her words catch up to him. “Oh.”

Next to Dimitri, Mercedes snickers behind her hand. “Felix, you won’t make it to the training grounds like this.”

Felix swirls around to look at her, nearly losing his balance again. “ _ Watch me. _ ”

“I will escort him, to make sure he arrives safely,” Dimitri offers, rising from his chair. Alright, maybe he is more than just tipsy. The floor is not supposed to be moving. He is almost sure of that.

“Ah, the gallant hero!” Annette pats him affectionately on the arm. “So sweet of you to help Felix out!”

“Felix’s going  _ training,  _ for sure,” Sylvain drawls with a grin and a wink, and Felix instantly grows crimson.

“I am right here, you know!” Felix looks like he is going to stomp his foot in indignation like he used to when they were little, and oh, that is a sudden and adorable memory. “I am leaving. Goodbye.”

“I will be back soon,” Dimitri tells everyone as he picks up his cloak and attempts to convince his legs to follow Felix out of the room. “Please go on with the party.”

“Don’t worry, Dimitri, we’ll hold the fort down for you!” Sylvain gives him a wave. “Have fun, kids.”

Dimitri looks around the room before he steps out into the corridor. Sylvain has an arm around Ingrid, who has slid into his armchair a while ago; she, oblivious, is leaning away from him as she is explaining something crucial-sounding to a stupored Ashe, holding his face between her hands. Ashe’s eyes are blinking owlishly above squished cheeks. Mercedes is settling in to nap on Dedue’s shoulder; he reaches carefully to wrap the gifted blanket around her form. Annette has procured a cat from somewhere and is petting the bewildered animal, feeding it scraps from the cold cuts tray.

Dimitri really loves them all very dearly.

Felix is stomping down the hallway when Dimitri catches up to him. He almost looks sober like this, if not for the blush noticeable even in the dim lamplight, and the deliberate way he approaches turns. Dimitri throws the cloak over his shirt - the fireplace and the presence of people have warmed the drawing room, but the palace is chilly in the closing maw of winter. Felix does not seem to notice the cold, striding with a purpose, and Dimitri, walking half a step behind him, can’t help admiring him: the angular lines of his shoulders, the way the Advisor’s black tunic hugs his waist - he still has it on, how was he not hot in the room? - the whisper of his hair across the fabric as it moves with every step.

He is so beautiful. Dimitri could spend a lifetime just looking at him and die a happy man.

Felix slows down, stops. Sways a little. Dimitri halts beside him.

“Hm,” Felix says. “I…don’t think this’s the right way.”

Dimitri tears his gaze away from Felix, looks around. He was so busy looking at Felix, he didn’t even notice they were going in the wrong direction. They must be in the guest wing - the floors look freshly swept of dust, but they have not passed a guard in a while, so it is not a very busy area.

“Shall we go back?” he suggests. “We can find our way around, I am certain.”

Felix turns around and starts walking back the way they came from without another word. After a moment of unsure footing, Dimitri follows. Their steps echo around the stone walls, fall mutely onto the tapestries. Fleeting ghosts pass them by, late night stragglers. Felix seems to shimmer out of view sometimes - Dimitri will not be entirely surprised if it turns out that he is wandering the palace on his own, coaxed away from the hearth and his friends by a hollow promise of company of more complications and useless yearning.

He wonders, briefly, what it would feel like to kiss Felix. Has been wondering about it more and more often. What he would do then - would he grab onto him? Would he let himself be held? What kind of sounds would he make? Dimitri would not be able to taste him, of course, but he could imagine...

Dimitri shakes his head violently, nearly staggering into a wall. Indulging in these fantasies, following along these visions never brings him peace - he should know by now.

“I would like to thank you, by the way,” he says. It is not a ‘by the way’, of course - they haven’t said a word to each other except for those two sentences earlier.

“For what?” comes the question.

“Well - for not getting me an early gift. Or, that is - a gift at all. I do not wish to presume anything, and surely you must know that I do not expect anything.” Goddess, he  _ really  _ must be drunker than he thought, already going off on a ramble. “I know that most of our friends did it anyway but I did truly mean it when I said that nothing of the sort was required, and…”

Felix stops so suddenly that Dimitri almost collides with him but manages to sidestep at the last moment. “I did,” he says quietly, staring fixedly ahead.

Dimitri cannot immediately connect the dots. “Pardon me - you did..?”

“I did - get you a gift, that is. Well. Kind of.”

“Oh,” Dimitri says, feeling both winded and elated. He did not realize - maybe he did want Felix to think of him, after all. Which is a ludicrous thought, of course: they see each other near daily, Felix is his  _ advisor, _ for Goddess’ sake, of course he has to think - is duty-bound, in fact…

But…it is nice.

Dimitri gets so lost in this revelation that he does not notice Felix turning around, stepping up to him. Comes back to a set of amber eyes staring intently into his. To a hand sliding up the front of his shirt, almost reaching the open part of it, the exposed skin, hot against the cool air.

Dimitri’s mouth goes dry. “Felix...?”

“Stop me if I’m wrong,” Felix murmurs, and then he is leaning up and kissing him.

Dimitri’s head spins so violently it is a miracle he stays on his feet. Felix’s lips are so  _ warm _ as they move against his, and he is not letting out any sounds, but he  _ is _ breathing hard through his nose, and his face is so adorably serious and looks a little bit silly from this up close, and his free hand grabs onto Dimitri’s arm - it all truly feels so nice that Dimitri closes his eye and relaxes into the kiss, into the firm pressure of it and the slick, soft warmth. If  _ this _ is so pleasant, how wonderful would it be to really kiss Felix...

The hand that was on Dimitri’s shirt nudges up a little higher, brushes against the skin there, and it is this point of contact that hits Dimitri like a red-hot brand, like a pail of thawed water.

He pulls back with a gasp, shaking, trying to make sense of it all. It  _ was _ a vision…right?

His lips feel tingly. Dimitri lifts an absent hand to touch them, the cool brush of his gauntlets stealing the sensation away.

Felix is looking at him again, with the same concentrated expression on his flushed face. “Happy not-birthday,” he grumbles and lowers his eyes for a moment, watching his hand slide to the open collar of Dimitri’s shirt. “Hope you like it.” He sounds almost angry, like he did not just…

He did though, did he not? And Dimitri missed everything because he was thinking too much?

“Yeah,” Dimitri breathes. “I - I really did, I - could we…” he stammers, praying desperately that Felix will understand.

A light goes on in Felix’s eyes, twin flames of surprise and excitement, and then he drags Dimitri down by the collar and Dimitri shifts his attention away from Felix’s eyes to a much more pressing issue.

Felix kisses like he fights: decisive, determined, dominant. Dimitri’s head spins and spins and spins, and he has to bring his hands up to Felix’s shoulders to steady himself, to keep shaping his lips after the ever-changing memory of Felix’s, and it is heady, and wondrous, and entirely unreal.

Felix breaks away this time but instantly presses his body along the line of Dimitri’s even as he is trying to catch his breath. The strange tingle, the shiver permeating Dimitri’s blood, the vibration under his skin spread from his lips down his neck and chest and back, awakening his entire body, pulling at something low in his gut, a half-forgotten sensation. He needs - he  _ needs, _ and he presses back, meeting Felix halfway.

Felix lets out a hiss at the contact. “I want…” he trails off and marks every dot of the ellipsis with hands firmly squeezing Dimitri’s ribs, his waist, his hips, burning hot through the fabric. “We can - do you want this or not?”

He pulls Dimitri towards himself by the hips and  _ oh,  _ the strange itch beneath his skin is relieved and amplified at the same time - how can this even be possible?

A sharp memory pierces the back of his head, his chest is doused with cold so sharp that he sways - hooded green eyes, a narrow hand, metal sticking to his tongue - but everything is warm, everything is  _ warm,  _ warmer than that hollow feeling, warmer than the pinprick of fear of someone who is long dead.

Who was killed by Felix. For him.

The tide of gratitude, of fierce and blazing  _ something _ is so sudden and strong that Dimitri tips towards Felix under its force, and slides his hands up Felix’s shoulders and frames his face - and oh Goddess, if only he could put any of this into words, if only he could express just  _ how much _ Felix means to him.

And Felix wants - he says he does - and Dimitri does not even know what he means -  _ what _ they can do, how far Felix wants them to go, but yes, yes to everything, anything,  _ yes.  _ He is not afraid. Not of Felix.

Felix’s question is pointless: of course Dimitri wants, wants,  _ wants, _ has always wanted him, as long as - though maybe ‘want’ is too vulgar a word. What should he call this overwhelming tenderness bursting from his heart? What should he call this useless, limitless devotion? What should he call this longing, this missing, this pull in his chest?

But Felix is waiting for an answer.

“I do, I do,” Dimitri repeats, his mind reeling from this whirlwind, from his world flipping itself on its axis. “We could - the rooms…”

They are far away from their own quarters, but the guest rooms are here, and the fireplaces are unlit, of course, but the dust has been wiped and the beds made, and as Dimitri scrabbles for the door handle of a random room, backed into it by Felix’s insistent weight, he makes a mental note to apologize to the staff for ruining their efforts.

That is for tomorrow, though.

Felix kicks the door closed behind them, plunging them into darkness, the inky swirls of it diluted only by the icy glare of the winter moon.

Dimitri used to seek out the shadows, their familiarity a miserable kind of comfort. These days, having crossed back into the realm of men rather than monsters, he tends to shy away from their vague inconsistency, from how prone they are to shaping a stage for his visions and inviting his ghosts out for a prowl. But right now Felix is in his arms, the lines of his silhouette are sharp with intent, and Dimitri’s entire future could play out in the room around them and he would not notice. He can only stare, enraptured, as Felix undoes the ties of his tunic, shrugging it unceremoniously off and onto the floor.

“C’mon, Dimitri, don’t make me do all the work." Contrary to his words, Felix tugs the cloak off of his shoulders himself, tossing it onto the bed, and reaches for his hands. “The gauntlets…”

Dimitri rears back like a spooked horse before he can help it. The crawling mess of scars, the loss of control - the idea alone is too much. Even now, as he is about to be stripped bare, body and soul, and offer it all to Felix.

“Felix, I cannot - not these,” he pleads, and is met with a confused look. He scrambles to speak before Felix can draw the wrong conclusions. “You can - take what you want, give what you want, I have - I can - my mouth or…" Dimitri feels his face grow hot with embarrassment. "I just - would like to be close to you. In any way. It doesn’t matter to me, how.”

Dimitri is panicking, and his breaths are coming too fast, and there is a coolness gripping the back of his neck like a steel trap, and Goddess, what is he even saying? Does he even know what he is offering?

"Hey, calm down," Felix's decisive voice cuts through the haze as he smooths his hands down Dimitri's shoulders, bringing him back to earth. "It's alright, keep them on. And the rest?" 

Felix does not understand, that much is obvious, but Dimitri cannot begrudge him that, and especially not since he instantly backs off anyway. "The rest is alright," he nods,  _ breathes _ . "The rest can go." 

And that is how he ends up on the bed, bare save for the gauntlets, the soft fur of his cloak embracing his back, brushing against his shoulders and sides and hips. He should feel self-conscious, probably, but between the alcohol drowning his half-vision in cloying delirium, the darkness spilling over every line and scar and doubt - and Felix wasting no time in settling on top of him, shielding his body from the chill with his own, he...simply forgets to do so.

“Alright?” Felix asks, and runs a firm hand down his chest, over and over - he seems to be really fond of it, though Dimitri has no idea, why.

“Yes,” he says when he remembers to speak, and it really is alright - the only thing that is not is how far away Felix still is when he needs to be closer. “Come here.”

Felix is a vision of lean muscle shifting under skin that ripples with uneven lines of healed scars, and his eyes are the black of ice-holes in the dead of winter, dangerous and just as entrancing. In their deep waters, Dimitri pulls in great gulps of air at each press and slide, at all the  _ skin _ , the contact of it endless and insistent and all-encompassing after not being touched for so long. 

Dimitri half-expects bolts of lightning to dance between them in the short moments when they part, mirroring the labyrinthine lines that mark Felix’s skin. He should be nervous, uncertain, out of his depth, but the limitless dark of Felix’s eyes pulls him into its heady embrace.

“Felix…” he calls, and Goddess, how he wishes he could lift a hand to his face and have the touch not be a pretense. His heart is hammering out of his chest, reverberating violently through his entire body. He could probably cry from the intensity of it, from being  _ touched _ , from being touched  _ like this.  _ When was the last time - when was it last that skin-on-skin contact was not so intricately interwoven with violence?

Felix pulls back just enough to look at him. His parted lips are shining in the moonlight, and it is Dimitri,  _ Dimitri _ who has made them so, and the thought makes him want nothing more than to tug Felix back down and abandon speaking for good, to not waste another second that he could spend learning the curve of his mouth.

But no, Dimitri had something to say… It was important… His head is spinning so.

“You are beautiful,” he tells Felix, because it is the truth, because he is so breathtaking that Dimitri is almost afraid to move from where his body brackets Felix’s own. And he knows,  _ knows  _ that Felix is the greatest exception, that he will not break like other precious things, because he is strong and willful and proud and, and…

No, that is not all of it. Dimitri also knows that Felix is soft underneath all that armour, and passionate, and capable of the fiercest devotion. Which means that the blows that do land wound him deeply.

At the end of the day, it comes down to the matter of trust, Dimitri supposes.

Felix leans his head against Dimitri's chest for a second and lets out a strangled sound - a growl of frustration, maybe, or a moan, or something else entirely.

“You blather too much,” he complains. Bites at the skin right there at his disposal, prompting a surprised yelp from Dimitri. “I’ll fix this.”

Felix makes good on his promise: very soon, the sounds that do rip themselves from Dimitri’s throat stop bearing any resemblance to actual words, the last of his coherency shredded like the bedsheets caught between the plating on his fingers.

Dimitri’s memory is full of smoldering holes and is still unraveling bit by bit every day, the spread of his ailment slowed but not entirely stopped. But as he pants and writhes and  _ sobs, _ his every nerve ending set blissfully alight under the pinpoint of Felix’s unwavering focus, his only lucid thought is the hope that he remembers every second of it. Whatever it  _ is, _ even if it is just this one time that he gets to hold Felix  _ so close _ \- he does not want to forget.

Sleep steals him quickly afterwards as he is lying there, befogged and boneless and bled dry, his body sinking pleasantly into its own heaviness, his mind lighter than air. Dimitri is just barely aware of Felix reaching over him to pull the edge of the thick embroidered bedspread on top of them, trapping Dimitri in a soft cocoon of fur and satin and Felix’s hair brushing his cheek as he huddles closer for warmth. The last thing Dimitri does before falling asleep is move his hands away from Felix so that the sharp edges of the plates do not bother him.

It is still night when Dimitri is awoken by pain. His hands are sore from their bent position, from being in the gauntlets for too long, but after some awkward movement Dimitri realizes that, trapped as he is, he does not have enough space to take them off without waking Felix. He carefully unfolds the bedspread; Felix, buried under the cloak that has somehow ended up on top of him, stirs and grouses but does not wake.

Sitting up is not an easy feat: Dimitri is still drunk, and the world has a hazy underwater quality to it. He is also sticky and sore in places he has never been before, and his hands are simultaneously hurting and asleep too much to securely bear any weight.

He ends up sitting on the edge of the bed, needled into wakefulness by the chilled air and the ache, and fumbles with the clasps of the gauntlets until they come off. Dimitri places them by his side and hunches over, squeezing his hands between his thighs in an attempt to ease the pain.

He takes a deep breath, listening to the blood throb around his bones.

A sound of movement behind him. Then, “What’s wrong?”

Dimitri straightens up to look back at Felix, but notes absently that he does not bother to reach for the gauntlets. Maybe he did want Felix to see, after all.

“Nothing - ah,” he gives Felix a smile that he hopes looks reassuring and not as strangled as he is feeling. “Just. Dealing with my hands.”

Felix sits up, dragging the cloak around his shoulders, then crawls towards Dimitri. His approach is slow and deliberate, his eyes are attentive on Dimitri’s, leaving him ample opportunity to stop him, to keep him away. Dimitri gives Felix another small smile and turns to face forwards again, exposing his back to him.

A few seconds later, the fur lining brushes Dimitri’s skin, and Felix bumps his chin against his right shoulder.

“Do they hurt?” he asks quietly. His breath smells like alcohol - he must still be drunk as well, drunker, even, than Dimitri is.

Dimitri looks down at his hands, pulling them up from between his thighs. Offering them, palms up, to be witnessed by Felix. A shiver runs through him as he hears Felix’s breath hitch. He knows they are - a sight. It is fine, it - it really is.

“Not - generally, no,” he replies, turning them over slowly, watching the ridges of scars crawl and morph in the moonlight. Lets them drop back into his lap.

Dimitri feels the mattress dip as Felix shifts behind him; his chin on Dimitri’s shoulder is their only point of contact.

“Are they hurting now, then?”

An impulse prompts Dimitri to try to bend his fingers, to curl them away, to hide them, but in the absence of the gauntlets they barely twitch.

Felix moves closer, nudging his weight against Dimitri’s back. His hands reach out, hover next to Dimitri’s, just as slender and graceful as the rest of him. “May I? I - I’ll be careful,” he hurries to add.

Dimitri hangs his head in a nod, his eyelids fluttering closed, but snaps them back open again when Felix’s hands cover his, light and probing. It is so much - again - and for a moment Dimitri is reminded of the last memory of his hands being touched, the motion uncaring, violent, swift - guards wrestling a dangerous animal into submission, shackles closing around his wrists, chains pulled taut…

Felix’s hands slide up his forearms, unafraid to dig into the thick muscle there, the healthy skin covered in goosebumps. “You’re alright,” he whispers, so close that the heat of his breath brushes the shell of Dimitri’s ear. His back tingles from the warm air trapped between them. Felix moves his hands back down, covers the pale bands of scarring encircling his wrists.

Dimitri takes a quivering breath, pulled back by the sharp sensation on his skin. Felix - is being so patient with him, so - so strangely comforting, but Dimitri understands: in the privacy of the darkness, in the loose liberation of alcohol, he also does not feel entirely himself - or maybe he feels more himself than he could ever afford to. He does not know which one is true, stuck too deep in the middle of it.

“Yes,” he chews on his lip, watches Felix move his hands back, each trace a faint, faraway trail of warmth. “My apologies, I - know they are not…”

“Shut up,” the words come out without their usual venom, defanged. Felix pushes down harder, massages the ridges of wine-red scar tissue, the pale patches of surviving skin. The sterile moonlight throws them into sharp contrasts of black bubbling across white. “Whatever you were about to say, it’s not true and I don’t want it.”

Dimitri turns his face away from Felix, plunging him deeper into the blindness in hopes that he will not notice the agonized twist of Dimitri’s mouth. Everything,  _ everything  _ is  _ too much,  _ but Felix falls silent, focusing on his hands. Dimitri barely feels Felix’s ministrations, of course, watches as if from a distance, but after a while the pain begins to subside, and he tips his head back onto Felix’s shoulder and closes his eyes, drained and at mercy. 

Felix slips out in the morning, disappearing for the entire day - they have nothing scheduled together, and he uses the opportunity. When he comes to find Dimitri in his quarters in the evening, he does not want to talk about it, and Dimitri does not know how to read him. 

Felix is, has always been, a tangle of contradictions, loyal and lethal and luring and luminous, and so the visions surrounding him are as much of a tangle, eclipsed by the glare of his light. On its own, this would scare Dimitri, but he knows, by now, that Felix stays. He always, unwaveringly, stays - a guiding light in Dimitri’s orbit, even when he is far away, passing on his blind side. His dearest, oldest friend.

They end up falling into bed together again. And the next night. And almost every night in the week that follows. Dimitri takes the plunge, removes his gauntlets - and Felix guides his hands wordlessly, curls his own fingers on top of Dimitri's, and Dimitri follows, and learns, and drinks it all in. And the frequency of Felix’s touch, the warmth of it - it awakens the starved, dogged hunger in him, hunger born of too many years of being denied a friendly touch.

Dimitri knows his cursed luck well, counts his blessings despite it like the greatest treasures they are, undeserving as he is. Dimitri does not get good things, as a rule, or at least does not get to keep them, has bloodily fought his way towards - against, sometimes - where he is now. And to want more always means to invite trouble and losses, his punishment for hubristic greed. 

And being with Felix so intimately, finding him in his bed so many times that try as he might to keep every memory sharp, Dimitri eventually loses count - all of it already threatens to make his helpless heart burst. If Felix were in love with him too, Dimitri simply would not stand a chance.

Something prompts Felix to seek out his company, and Dimitri - Dimitri amputates all his straying thoughts, forces himself to stay in the moment instead of wondering about what could be - because every moment he spends morosely distracted is a moment missed forever. 

If there is something in his tattered being that Felix needs for whatever reason - nothing would make Dimitri happier than to give it to him. The way it settles between them - it all really is for the best. Truly.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs:  
> \- focus on Dimitri's disability  
> \- violent visions  
> \- assassination attempt  
> \- suicial ideation/mental health issues

_ staying alive is a difficult job _

_ by staying alive, you sacrifice something else _

With time, the realm begins to release the breath it has been holding since the end of the war. People want normalcy, predictability, routine - they want their regular winter worries, and Solstice and Yule and Midwinter celebrations. The citizens of Fhirdiad want to walk through its streets and see decorations and unbroken lights, and they want to walk past the palace grounds and know without a shadow of a doubt that inside, the council is in session, as it always is this time of the year, and that the lords are busy deciding the course of action that would yield the best results for every last Faerghan.

And so the temporary autumnal council meets again in winter - and still in the same composition, with the notable and welcome exception of Sylvain replacing his father, and they settle into a sort of a routine, gliding effortlessly along the paths trodden by countless lords before, repeating the truths buried in the bones that have long since turned to ash.

“It is always useful to make your position more secure in the eyes of the people,” Yrvach says, his hands folded neatly on the table, his tone reasonable. “They appreciate stability in a time of so many changes. Maybe it would be prudent to consider taking a wife.”

Dimitri stops breathing halfway through an exhale and looks over the discussion in the few seconds that his body stays still. It is involuntary, an unconscious remnant from a darker time: the imperials in the Faerghan territory, afraid of the mysterious beast destroying the troops, learned to bring corked vials of poisonous gas with them. Dimitri, in turn, learned to cut off his own airflow in a span of a moment and act on what he had, for that moment meant the difference between death and - whatever it was he was doing.

Dimitri finishes breathing out. Breathes in again, measured, slow.

“I do not see the relevance to the matter at hand,” he responds. “Which is the perspective of merging our trade routes with Adrestian.”

It is meant as a dismissal, and maybe Dimitri is a bit harsh, his limbs suddenly a little too warm, the pulse of an ache in his head a little too strong - but Yrvach evidently misses the point anyway.

“With all respect, Your Majesty,” he says. “Please correct me if I am wrong, but it is most unusual for the ruling monarch to stay unwed for so long. And with so many changes happening - including the trade with Adrestia - it would not be an unreasonable idea to signal to the people that the core of the realm stays true to tradition.”

People around the table nod their support of the notion. Not all: Ashe is trying to conceal a look of alarm, Sylvain slowly leans back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head as he glances over everyone’s heads, and Dedue is stock still to Dimitri’s left. The rest though - the rest are behind Yrvach on this. To them, it is only a natural progression.

But the thought alone makes Dimitri fear throwing up, because…

Because it is not as if he has no idea what Yrvach means. It is not as if he is not frighteningly, suffocatingly aware of what is expected of him, of how he does not belong to himself, not really, how he cannot afford to be selfish, not without disappointing, and angering, and alienating.

Dimitri wants things to change. Wants to build Faerghus - no,  _ Fódlan _ \- into something different, wants to leave the realm a better place than the one he was released into from the womb of his mother.

But until then - until then, this is just another fight he has to fight.

Felix joins it here, sometimes, and snaps at Yrvach not to sidetrack the council - and then snaps turn to snarls when Yrvach still does not take the hint or chooses to ignore it deliberately.

But no - the void stays silent, and Dimitri cannot even gauge the expression on his face without making his interest in it painfully obvious.

Perhaps, once Dedue leaves for Duscur once more, he should ask Felix to sit on his left. This is not a real battlefield, after all - no need to shield his blind side anymore.

“There are more important topics to discuss right now,” Dimitri holds Yrvach’s eyes until he looks away. He knows that his one eye, his eyepatch, the intriguing contrast of something concealed on the best known face in Faerghus - it unnerves people. And this time, he does not have it in himself to feel bad when it works in his favour.

A beat passes, but the silhouettes settle, and people decide against speaking out.

Dimitri clears his throat. “Back to Adrestia…”

*

“I don’t understand why you have to be so difficult,” Felix grumbles, pacing the length of Dimitri’s study. 

He did not strictly have to follow him here, yet he did, fuming sullenly all the way from the council room, and now the brewing storm finally breaks.

“Felix, this is the same song the council sings every time there is a new monarch who does not happen to lump their wedding and the coronation together, as usual.” Dimitri watches his pacing with an eyebrow raised. 

A corner of the carpet is curling upwards, and Felix kicks at it as he passes it on the way to the bookshelves, then again as he turns towards the windows. The corner does not seem particularly cowed by the rough treatment, and Felix scowls down at it at the next turn.

“Yeah, for a reason,” he tells the corner, grinds his heel into it. “Dynasty. Bloodlines. Heirs. All that bullshit. The fucking Blaiddyd claim to the throne.”

“Which I do not think is going to be disputed.” Dimitri raises his hands - if Felix were not currently stalking off to the windows again, maybe the gesture would placate him. “Since they named me the Saviour King and all. And by now it is not a secret for anyone that Fódlan will soon be united under my rule.”

It is traditional, yes, for the monarch to take a spouse simultaneously with the throne. Traditional, but not compulsory. If the heir is what the lords worry about, then it is not even necessary to trap some poor woman in a marriage with DImitri. The Blaidyd bloodline  _ has _ been preserved with the help surrogates in the past.

“All the more reason to act the part.” Felix sounds so angry - why is he so angry?

“I have no siblings - or any relatives - in whose favour I could be made to abdicate,” Dimitri reasons. “Everyone who stood against me is either dead, under arrest, or in self-imposed exile. If I say that there are far more pressing issues in the realm than this, nobody can argue with that in good faith.”

Felix is at the bookshelves again, but this time, he stops with his back to Dimitri. His shoulders are a tense, terse line, and he is utterly still.

“You’ll have to marry, sooner or later,” he says, and his voice sounds - quieter, and suddenly so hollow. “You may as well accept it as the inevitability it is.”

Oh - he is not angry. He is upset.

Dimitri’s heart gives a familiar painful knock against his ribs. There are - moments, here and there, where he upsets Felix just like there are moments where Felix upsets him in turn, and Dimitri is learning from his mistakes and  _ is _ getting better - but sometimes it happens anyway. Even though they  _ are, _ truly, doing better on the whole. Well enough to - uh. 

Dimitri does not dare say ‘make love’, for then if would have to be - both parties would have to be on the same page, and - he knows enough about the world to know that not everyone is the same as he. Not everyone has to be - his mind always stutters here, cradling it, trembling - has to be  _ in love _ in order to be intimate with another person.

And Dimitri is not big enough of a fool to bring it up after Felix’s early warning. It said enough anyway. Dimitri got his answer without even having to ask. And pressing further would only scare Felix away, and Dimitri - Dimitri is selfish. He is so terribly selfish.

But still - the talk of marriage is making Felix sad. The idea of Dimitri marrying so soon is making him sad - Dimitri is fairly certain of that, though he cannot say  _ why,  _ just as he cannot say why Felix insists on talking about it - of all the things he could be talking about.

“I don’t want to,” he says simply. “I wish to bring forth a future where there is no need for this.”

Felix snorts, inelegant, raw. His back is still turned. “No need for marriage? You think it the worst evil?”

Now this is certainly not a point of contention between them - Dimitri knows that Felix’s opinion on such things aligns with his own. No, this is - personal, somehow.

“Not the institution itself, no,” Dimitri shakes his head, though Felix does not see it. “But arranged marriages, forced, ones of convenience - I wish to make sure that there is no reason for them to happen in the first place.”

“And what are you going to do until then?” Felix turns around sharply, waves at the door, at the world on its other side; the gesture a swing of a weapon at what is hurting. “Prance around as the only bachelor king in the history of Faerghus?”

“Felix.” Why will he not understand? It is so frighteningly simple. “They can bring it up as many times as they want - I will not marry. I have no desire to do so.”

Well - he does. He does, truly. But to speak it aloud would be unthinkable - and his voice does not echo in his ears. He never speaks here. Because it would not be the right thing to do.

Felix jerks his head away with a grimace. He looks close to splintering. Braced for a blow. No, not braced - whatever it was, it has already happened.

A stinging sorrow settles in Dimitri’s chest. The same kind he used to get, surveying a battlefield after the fight was over. Things that went wrong while he was looking elsewhere, busy with something else. Damage that he failed to prevent.

What did he miss this time?

But more importantly, how can he make it better?

“Felix,” he takes a step towards him; another, emboldened, when Felix does not run.

_ ‘My dear,’ _ he wants to say, the words rising up his throat, bleeding out of everything that he is. There is no way, truly, that Felix does not see it. If he wanted it - well. No point in dwelling on  _ ifs. _

“What,” Felix throws, his eyes fixed somewhere around Dimitri’s collar. A stray hair is sticking to his lips, and he huffs at it, tossing his head, claws at his face with a distracted hand but does not catch it.

Dimitri keeps coming closer until they are almost chest to chest, until Felix would have to lift his face to look him in the eye. “Allow me,” he says, half-questioning, with a hovering, gauntleted hand, and at Felix’s terse nod he brushes the offending hair gently from his pursed mouth.

That is when Felix glances up at him, and he looks - he just looks tired, and maybe resigned. He speaks here sometimes:  _ ‘What do you want?’ _ he asks, and  _ ‘What are you waiting for?’, _ but right now he is silent, and this close, Dimitri can see all the hints on the map of his skin where the frown lines never really disappear anymore, the pale cross-hatch of tiny scars that are never going to go away. And then they grow even closer and blur and Felix leans up and into him, pressing their lips together.

Felix is stiff at first, his mouth in a tight line even though he is the one who initiated the kiss, but Dimitri knows how to be patient. Knows how to wait. If Felix does not wish to listen to his words - well, Dimitri was never any good at them anyway.

So he curls an arm around Felix’s waist and nips at his lower lip the way he knows by now Felix likes, and by the time he pulls away Felix’s eyes are hooded and slightly glazed in the moment before he realizes he is not being kissed anymore and they alight with indignancy.

“Felix.” Dimitri leans back in to kiss him again, humming against his lips, feeling a hand fist in his collar and pull, tugging him closer.

Dimitri tries to remember - did he dismiss the guards? There is no empty spot in his mind that hints at a forgotten memory. And then it comes to him: he did not, because they were already leaving by the time he and Felix arrived, knowing from experience by now that when the Advisor is in such a foul mood after a council meeting it is best to pre-emptively retreat since they are going to be sent away regardless.

Which is now very convenient. Dimitri likes to think that they are discreet, and even though Felix stays in Dimitri’s quarters most of the nights lately, he does trust the scarce household not to talk. What spies his lords have implanted in the palace - Dimitri knows that they will not reveal their hands by wasting them on something as trivial as an affair.

So this is not about secrecy, but rather because there is no need to subject anyone to their private life.

It makes him feel good, being with Felix. In his ever-changing yet constant orbit, in the confusing swirl of visions around him, Dimitri does not need to keep trying to decipher it. He can simply let go for a while and just be - normal, as much as ‘normal’ can ever apply to him. 

He can just be a man in love.

Dimitri takes half a step back despite Felix’s hand still on his collar, and holds Felix’s eyes, and sinks to his knees.

“Dimitri, what…” Felix’s words are cut short when the motion tugs his hand out of the fabric, bringing the palm against Dimitri’s cheek in an accidental caress, and Dimitri nuzzles into the skin-warmed leather of it before he can stop himself.

“May I?” he asks, placing an absent-minded kiss against his palm, and Felix watches him, transfixed, before he suddenly shakes his head.

“No,” he says, so far above him, so far away, and Dimitri’s heart sinks - and soars again. “Bed. We have time.”

*

Dimitri’s mind is always quiet afterwards, even if just for a few minutes. A short time that simultaneously flies and oozes, amber-like, around him, and he is encased in its hazy warmth and is allowed, for once, simply to exist.

And it is wonderful, of course, that Felix happens to exist right next to him as well, beautiful and intense and immensely corporeal - and with his guard lowered much farther the usual threshold of what the world is allotted to see of him. And there is still that feeling in Dimitri that will not be tamed no matter what, but when he happens to cast one look at Felix like this, it stretches and purrs and pulls its claws out of his heart for a moment - though he immediately misses them.

Felix is quiet, serious again, though still melting into the sheets, still with an odd look of softness that Dimitri only vaguely remembers from two decades ago. How could anyone ever truly believe that that person was gone? But then again, they do not get to see Felix the way he is now, holding Dimitri’s right hand between both of his, rubbing slow circles over the battlefield of scars as if such simple motion could smooth them away. He holds it so close to his face that if Dimitri had proper control, he would only need to curl his fingers to touch Felix’s nose.

Felix does it...often. Dimitri does not have a clear frame of reference, but between his need for the gauntlets and the desire to keep the graveyard of his hands as far out of his mind as possible, he tends to avoid looking at them unless absolutely necessary.

Felix, however, seems to be of a different opinion. He has not shied away from them even on first night, and when Dimitri attempted to keep the gauntlets on again, Felix made the face that meant he was holding himself back from calling Dimitri an idiot.

Whatever it is, it is not the acidic singe of pity.

But still, Dimitri wonders.

“Your first reaction to them was not...was milder than what I would have expected,” he says. His throat suddenly feels too tight, maybe from the way he has to turn his head to see Felix, but looking away becomes impossible.

So much for being normal.

Felix’s fingers still. Dimitri cannot see much of his face, half-concealed by the repelling,  _ crawling _ mess, but he sees enough to guess his pinched expression.

Sometimes, he constructs it into something safe and blank and waves Dimitri’s words off as the influence of alcohol, or just shrugs and that is the end of it.

The expression stays pinched, a bandage sticking to a wound, pulling at it.

“I’ve - seen them already,” is what he ends up saying.

Dimitri makes an instinctive motion to pull away, but Felix’s hold must be stronger than this half-hearted attempt.

Felix resumes the massage, and Dimitri watches his own fingers move as Felix digs into the back of his hand, pressing on the ligaments. The way his hands look - the way they must feel…

Even the mess of his eye does not drag a hook through his lungs the same way. Maybe because Dimitri lost it at a time when he could not be made to care - and by the time he was himself again, he was already used to it, accepted it as righteous retribution. The time to mourn was long over by then. But the hands...

Dimitri fights the nausea, the bitter burn in the back of his throat. He does not remember any of that; somehow, the idea of Felix seeing them for the first time without Dimitri knowing is a thousand times worse than the way he thought it had happened.

“When?” he grits out, mortified. Turning his head away did not help - his throat still feels tight.

“In Garreg Mach,” Felix replies quietly. “After the Gronder battle.”

Oh. That makes sense. “While I was unconscious?”

A pause - he must have nodded. “I came by soon after we flew you in. I didn’t think - I don’t know what I thought. Probably that it was something from Gronder. Didn’t look too closely. Next time I was there, they were under the covers, so I never asked.”

There is a slight pull in Dimitri’s shoulder, but he does not turn his head to find out what Felix is doing. For a while, they are quiet.

“You can’t - write with the gauntlets, can you?” Felix asks suddenly. “I barely ever see you hold a pen.”

Ah. “I can - well. I sign well enough, as I am sure you know,” Dimitri smiles in good humour, unsure if Felix is watching. The screen of blindness would be daunting on its own, but he can feel the trace of pressure in his hand, a tethering line. “I - developed a shorthand of sorts, over the years. I make notes and write drafts, and if I need something written out properly, I dictate it to the scribes.”

A short, soft huff of air exhaled through the nose, the way Felix does sometimes when he frowns. “I was wondering why the pages I receive from you are written in different hands. Sounds complicated.”

“I’ve had time to get used to it. Since - Duscur and everything.”

The tense pause coils swiftly - and is gone in the next second.

“Shit,” Felix says. “Sorry.”

Dimitri shrugs and turns his head, but whatever he was going to say immediately flies out of his mind when he sees Felix’s cheek pillowed on his hand, its softness squished right against the scar tissue.

His hand was under Felix’s cheek all this time, and he had no idea.

The punch to the gut is so sudden that Dimitri never even thought to brace himself for it. “Oh,” he chokes out against it.

Alarm flashes across Felix’s face, but then it quickly drops into something not as startled.

“They’re just hands, Dimitri,” he grumbles, and turns his head to drop a pointed peck. Dimitri watches it happen and feels nothing, numbness spreading and setting in somewhere in his chest. “You always act like they’re the ugliest thing in the world, but it’s just - scars. We all have them.”

Oh - Felix still does not understand. But Dimitri does not blame him.

“It’s not - just scars,” he says softly when it no longer seems like his chest is going to cave in if he speaks. “You know by now the, uh, motion range.” He watches Felix nod and does not feel it,  _ does not feel it.  _ “But the feeling too, it...fluctuates, but even on good days I can barely feel anything. On bad days, I would not even be able to tell their position without looking first.”

Just like his hearing, still damaged from that day in Enbarr. Most of the days, he hears well enough, but sometimes the hum becomes too insistent and drowns out everything but the ghosts.

Felix knits his brows together. “Even with the gauntlets?”

Dimitri gives an aborted shake of his head, rolls onto his shoulder and presses the right side of his face into the pillow. “They help with the motion, but that is it.”

Something ugly crosses Felix’s face - by now he knows that the gauntlets were Cornelia’s work, and oh, even an allusion to her never fails to call on something darker in the depths of his soul.

Which is - which is more comforting than it has any right to be, because sometimes Dimitri thinks himself mad - madder than usual - for still having nights when he wakes up drowning in fear of her. For still getting this urge to tear the gauntlets off and melt them down into a lump of metal and burn and burn and burn it until there is nothing left, even if this is the only pair he has now, even though he would be helpless without them. 

He wonders sometimes if it would be different, had he been the one to kill her instead of relying on Felix to save him. If perhaps it was the kind of closure that could have been achieved only by his own hand, or if it would have made no difference in the end whatsoever.

It is pointless to think about it, of course, just as it is pointless to think about many holes in the fabric of Dimitri’s past. But still, sometimes he does.

At least she never became a ghost. Dimitri staunchly refuses to think about that.

“And she never - I bet she never even thought to  _ bother,” _ Felix grits out.

Dimitri watches him close his eyes and forcefully wrestle everything back under control. His gaze is cool and steady when he looks at Dimitri again.

“I suppose she did not - and I never thought to ask,” Dimitri says. “There was always something more pressing to focus on.”

Felix places a hand on Dimitri’s forearm, slowly glides it over the sinewy twists of scars and veins towards the crook of his elbow, and halfway through the skin alights with sensation so suddenly that Dimitri startles at the tickle. Felix presses firmly down in response and watches the skin dip under his fingertips, pull at the puckered scars.

“Can I tell someone about them?”

Dimitri frowns in confusion. “What? Who?” he asks, trying not to sound alarmed. The answer comes to him before he finishes asking - parchment, tattoo ink, a tune that will not go away, molding all thoughts to its shape. “Annette?”

Felix’s eyes snap to his in an instant. “How did you - did she say anything to you?”

Dimitri winces. “No. It was just a guess.”

Felix hums in consideration but quickly lets it go. “Yeah. I meant Annette.”

“Felix - there is nothing that can be done about them,” Dimitri says softly. If only it were not true. “Annette is talented, but no magic, healing or otherwise…”

“It’s not that,” Felix speaks over him. “Something else. Can I.”

Dimitri’s gaze slides off of Felix’s face, follows the line of his shoulder and arm and hand where it is still moving slowly along his own arm, back and forth, the touch dull and sharp and dull again. 

It does not usually lead to anything bad, as far as he can see - not that he would expect it. The worst times have passed for Annette, when she was stretched the thinnest, like a glass drop with a long tip.

“You may, if you wish,” Dimitri responds; watches Felix give his arm a small squeeze. “May I ask, what for?”

Felix’s answer is immediate. “No.” he rolls away and up from the bed in one smooth motion, with hands on his hips and his beautiful, lean, scarred back to Dimitri as he glances around for his clothes. “If it works out, you’ll know.”

Just as well. And Felix is right - they should make themselves presentable again, the day is far from over. With a sigh, Dimitri resigns himself to getting up.

*

Dimitri’s second coronation is set to happen on the fifteenth of the Pegasus Moon. Felix is very obviously pleased about not having to celebrate his birthday since it will be eclipsed by everything else going on until Dimitri points out that they could take out two hares with one spear and hold one of the banquets in his honour. Felix is indignant and comes very close to stomping his foot, but then quickly buries them both in the paperwork that still needs to be done before the date.

Dimitri suspects that each of them is hoping that the other one will forget about it by the time the celebrations roll around. Even so, he unwittingly wastes quite some time on titillating daydreams about the possible ways to show Felix his appreciation when his birthday comes. It does have a sort of a poetic symmetry to it.

Annette’s arrival at the palace proves to be another welcome distraction.

“Here,” she says once the three of them retreat to Dimitri’s private drawing room and the tea is served. She presents him with a narrow wooden box, painted blue and lacquered. “I have to say, it was a real thinker, I wasn’t even sure at first how to… Right, it’s a surprise!” She lifts her hands with her fingers spread and wiggles them. “Surpriiise?”

Felix snorts. He has not touched his cup, fully focused on Dimitri instead.

“Thank you,” Dimitri says on a reflex, accepting the box in both hands even as his voice comes out decidedly bewildered. He considers asking about it, but - well.

“Don’t just sit there,” Felix mutters, his arms crossed. 

Annette smoothes her hands down her dress and reaches for one of the assorted dessert plates to grab a sweet, then seems to realize belatedly that a piece of chocolate-covered something might not be the best thing to fiddle with and pops it hastily in her mouth.

The anticipation hangs so disproportionately thick in the air that Dimitri half-expects the box to explode when he slides the cover aside.

It does not. Instead, it reveals a pair of gloves on a black velvet cushion.

“Oh. Thank you?” Dimitri repeats, his confusion only mounting.

The gloves are made of silk that has been bleached to ivory, though when he tilts the box slightly, a pearlescent play of light spills gently across the fabric. They are also almost entirely unadorned, with only a narrow golden embroidery running along the wrists.

“It’s spider silk,” Annette explains after quickly chewing and swallowing. She looks ready to launch herself right out of her armchair and across the low table, sweets be damned. “It’s very durable and resists water, which I never knew, actually! We commissioned them from someone in Gloucester, they keep an honest-to-Goddess spider farm, can you imagine?” She grimaces. “But anyway, I also added a couple of spells to make the fabric even stronger, and stain repellent,  _ and _ they can adjust to the air temperature! You can see the sigils on the inside, along the seams. Oh! And also you can wear them on their own, of course, but if you need to wear another set of gloves they will totally fit underneath because they are so thin!”

Just what exactly is Dimitri missing? Why is Annette so agitated?

“They are truly beautiful, a work of art,” Dimitri agrees. “But I’m afraid I still don’t…” he trails off when he looks at Felix, because as it turns out he also seems to be close to bursting from impatience.

“Just put them on already!” he exclaims. “Flames, you are killing Annette with your dawdling!”

It certainly does not look like Annette is the only one, but Dimitri’s instincts advise him against pointing it out. He picks the gloves carefully out of the box.

The first thing he notices is that they are light, surprisingly so. He might as well be holding a feather or a piece of a cloud.

And in the very next moment, something in the gloves  _ surges _ to life, and Dimitri’s Crest buzzes in an answering call, straining immediately towards the feeling, bunching up in his hands and thrumming against his skin, through the leather gloves and the steel gauntlets.

_ Oh. _

It cannot be.

“It cannot be,” Dimitri says, lost. The blood in him hums and writhes like a living thing, the pulse hammering through the spell in the gauntlets and outwards. “How did you…”

“Ah, well, it wasn’t really terribly hard,” Annette waves it off with a small laugh that makes Dimitri suspect that it, in fact, was. “I had to read up on remote control of spells and then figure out how to incorporate the same principle on a smaller distance, and then it was just a lot of tweaking the enhancements and making sure the fabric had enough give in the right places and… Ah, and then I remembered how one of my students made this very neat thing for her girlfriend - they live very far apart, and touch starvation can be a real issue, and…” 

Felix stifles a snort into his hand, obviously amused though still high strung. 

Annette stops abruptly and her eyes grow wide. “I won’t ramble anymore! But yeah, Felix sent a pair of your gloves to the farm for size, and then I worked in the spells and - ah, right, I did have to write to Marianne - but only because Felix told me she already knew!” She points an accusing hand at him. “And I had questions for her! But only the strictly necessary ones!”

“Dimitri, please save her,” Felix is openly grinning now, and effortlessly catches Annette’s hand when she flaps at him in indignation. “Look, she’s already as red as her hair.”

_ “Am not!” _ Annette shrieks, mortified.

Maybe not yet, but she is getting there.

Dimitri looks down at the gloves, leaving the other two to their bickering for a moment. Whether it is the exact same spell that Cornelia had created or not, it definitely...feels very similar. And Annette - well, her and Felix and apparently Marianne, though he still does not know how to feel about that reminder - but especially Annette did so much work from ground up just to make something more comfortable for him to wear instead of the clunky, stiff, unyielding gauntlets that sometimes still seem to be seeping with someone else’s blood when he glances down at them, as if he is still stuck in war with both hands even as he negotiates and renegotiates every little thing that comes with peace.

If he can trade them for something so light and thin and soft and, and...for something made by a friend rather than  _ her... _

“Thank you, Annette,” Dimitri says yet again. “The amount of work - the  _ thought _ \- I am deeply grateful.”

“Ahh, it’s nothing,” Annette frantically busies herself with the sweets.

“It’s not ‘nothing’,” Felix grumbles and absently pushes one of the plates closer to Annette before looking up at Dimitri. “Are you going to try them on or not?”

“Right! That’s my cue, then,” Annette swallows with a gulp and gets up. “Let me know how it goes, alright? If anything needs tweaking or…”

“No, you may…” Dimitri clears his throat. “You may stay - if you wish.”

“Oh? Are you sure?” Annette wrings her hands, looks uncertainly to Felix, but he does not seem to notice, his eyes searching Dimitri’s face.

Dimitri sinks below the surface, leafs through his wavering memories. Too many people have seen them already - so what is one more? Especially if it is a friend. Maybe it would outbalance the rest, one day.

No, Dimitri decides. He really does not mind if Annette sees them.

He nods. “I am sure.”

The clasps of the gauntlets clack almost obscenely in the sudden and charged silence; Felix and Annette do not even try to pretend to busy themselves with something else.

Dimitri considers fumbling with them on his own like he often does. Decides against it and holds his hands out to Felix, palms up, and Felix slides to the edge of his seat and gets to pulling them off before Dimitri can say anything.

The gauntlets go, placed carefully on the hastily cleared space on the table, grotesque and chipped and ugly amidst the fine porcelain. Then, the leather gloves underneath. Dimitri keeps his head down, Annette’s face firmly out of sight.

Felix picks up Annette’s gloves and gives Dimitri a questioning look, and after his nod works the left glove on, the Crest snapping to it in an instant. The silk slides over Dimitri’s skin, and he is afraid that the soft fabric will catch on the scar ridges, or maybe will not fit over them, but it flows and stretches and settles, light and almost cold.

Dimitri’s heart skips a beat.

_ Cold. _

“I…” he begins, staring down at his gloved hand, with Felix’s fingers still around the wrist, firm and  _ warm. _ “I can - I can feel that.”

The words come out in a whisper. In the corner of his eye, he sees Annette lift her clasped hands towards her chest, but he cannot pay attention to that, not really, not when the gloves are  _ cold _ and Felix’s hands are  _ warm _ and he can  _ feel that. _

Felix’s fingers tighten in surprise and Dimitri feels it, too. He turns his hand in Felix’s hold and grasps onto his wrist as well, and his pulse hammers under Dimitri’s thumb.

He feels light-headed.

“Yeah, I - Felix mentioned that the gauntlets didn’t really do that, so I thought that maybe it would be a good idea to try?” Annette’s voice reaches him through the sudden thrum in his ears, and Dimitri shakes his head in an attempt to clear it. Wants to respond to Annette, to be polite, but his mouth will not open.

“Come on,” Felix says, soft. Squeezes his wrist, warm. “Let’s get the other one.”

They put the other glove on. Technically, Dimitri would be able to do it himself now, but he can only watch as Felix helps him, his world narrowed down to their hands, no more and no less.

And then it is done. Dimitri flexes his fingers and turns his hands over, and it is so strange, to see them move with such precision, undampened by the crude joints of the metal plates.

It is quite possible, Dimitri realizes, that he might cry.

“How are they feeling?” Annette asks, her voice faraway.

Dimitri rubs the pads of his fingers against his thumbs, curls his hands into fists until he feels the warmth of trapped air. Felix is still on the edge of his seat, still close, and Dimitri reaches for his hand and runs a thumb over his knuckles, feeling every bony bump. 

Right. Annette asked a question.

“They feel…” Dimitri pauses to clear his throat. “They are - very responsive. I am...not used to this anymore. And the sensations are…” He furrows his brow briefly. “It’s hard to compare - I confess I do not remember how much one is supposed to feel, but it’s - it is more. Definitely.”

Felix pulls up a cuff of Dimitri’s shirt and brushes a finger along the glove and then the naked skin, back and forth. “Any difference?”

Dimitri hums, listening to the sensation. Nods. “The gloves are - muted, I think.” He looks at Annette, ready to apologize, but she only nods as well, her narrowed eyes focused on Dimitri’s hands, and he gets a sinking feeling that this might not be the only pair he will be getting. “Annette, please do not concern yourself further - these are already incredible and so much more than what I am used to.”

“Noted,” Annette grins. “I’m  _ still _ going to see what I can do.”

“Are you alright?” Felix asks. He is still in the same position, his hand in Dimitri’s, though it cannot possibly be comfortable to perch like this.

Dimitri carefully squeezes his hand, delighting in the solid, firm, soft feel of it. “Yes,” he answers. “More than alright. Thank you both.”   
  


“Thank Annette, I didn’t do anything,” Felix scoffs.

Dimitri shakes his head. Though Annette definitely did the hardest part of the job, Felix’s words are still profoundly untrue.

*

Working on the unification proves to be just as never-ending as Dimitri has learned by now to expect from ruling the Kingdom, only infinitely more complicated now that there are not only the Faerghan customs and traditions to take into consideration.

Fódlan used to be one country, very long ago. But right now, it is cut in three, and it is going to take work until the trade routes, travel roads, and pilgrimage paths from all three can be unlocked and interlocked with each other into a seamless grid.

It reminds Dimitri of amputations, somehow. How the sliced blood vessels learn to heal and complete their circuits without the severed limbs. How he now aims to open them up again.

And it is not only the roads. Byleth’s words echo in Dimitri’s ears, words about strength lying in diversity. Faerghus’s poor and unreliable harvests have long been waved off as the effects of the harsh climate, but Dimitri has been suspecting for a while that changes could be made with the right knowledge of agriculture; how the experts from the marshier areas of Aegir, for example, could advise Galatea, or perhaps Goneril could teach Charon a thing or two about high altitude pastures.

There are so many aspects that require urgent attention, and so much infrastructure that needs to be planned now so that the construction can begin come spring - which means new alterations to the taxation plan, and more unhappy lords who will have to build said infrastructure on their territories, and more tension among commoners once the news reaches them.

In general, not everyone is happy with Dimitri. He has learned to expect and accept it as part of his job - someone is always bound to be unhappy. But what he quickly figures out, however, is that there is a relatively sure way to judge whether a decision would be a good idea in the long run.

Assassinations. Which, Dimitri reasons, are a precise enough indicator that somebody disagrees with his policies - that is, disagrees enough to decide that they would rather take their chances in a civil war rather than keep seeing him on the throne.

And so, he reaches into the visions and pulls them close and lets them surround him in their endless ghostly kaleidoscope - and then he, as always, tries his damnedest to make sense of them.

It is quite simple in the end, really. Pure arithmetics. Lower chances of assassination attempts are preferable to higher chances. Fewer attempts are preferable to more numerous. Attempts that are born of the disapproval of the lords are preferable to those that are born of the displeasure of the commoners.

Something tells Dimitri that Felix would not see it all the same way if he were to tell him about his decision-making process.

But the truth is, it  _ works. _ In a strange, convoluted way, but if Dimitri pays enough attention and makes timely adjustments and scraps plans that he would have otherwise stubbornly clung to, it works, and people are appeased, and the sharp edges that glint like blades in the dark are smoothed out into begrudging contentment. 

It is overwhelming and confusing and - and, to be frank, quite distressing sometimes. Dimitri travels down paths that reveal hidden daggers only to bury them in his heart or stomach or back, reveal food laced with poison he cannot taste, tampered saddle girths, sealed envelopes with innocuous looking powder that crawls into his lungs and blooms into horrible sores. 

But in the end, a few disturbing visions on top of Dimitri’s regular nightmares and ghosts are a small price to pay for a chance at peace. 

And oh, the ghosts  _ are _ angry with Dimitri. Always ready to remind him of everything he has failed to do and prophesize what - and who - he has yet to fail, always ready to crowd his mind until he cannot see or hear anything else and taunt him with pointless warnings of what he is going to miss.

Which is also how one of the attempts ends up slipping through the gaps in Dimitri’s attention.

He is in the gardens when it happens, wandering down the snow-covered paths, in a world of silence and muted greys of a late winter evening. The sky hangs low and pale, a blurry grey of mist. He could - should - probably fit in some more work before retiring for the night, but the air is so pleasantly cold and crisp as it coats his lungs, forcing out the dusty stuffiness of the palace, that he could not resist the sudden call of the outside.

He is wandering alone: the guards would make too much noise in their armour, and Felix has left for Fraldarius about a week ago, and Dedue has been detained in Duscur by a snowed-in mountain pass.

Dimitri is deep enough into the snowy hedges that the world around him is utterly silent. His night vision is not the best, and his memory is patchy, but his feet still seem to remember the layout, unchanged over the years. 

There is a fountain that is carved, inexplicably, into a school of Teutates pikes. Dimitri and his friends used to climb it all the time as children - the numerous fish heads and tails provided great footholds. Right now it is but a lump of snow.

That means that the entrance to the labyrinth should be somewhere nearby. Everything is made distorted and hazy by the thick cover of snow, a world of silent, towering giants, big enough to make Dimitri feel small and insignificant among them.

In that muted world, a sharp crack suddenly rings out, a twig snapping under a foot.

A whirlpool of visions floods Dimitri’s mind in the next instant - a scuffle, brief and violent and dirty; glinting metal pressing cold, too cold against and into the heated skin; the poison on it, on the contrary, too hot and cooling the blood that licks along it and turns inwards, hurrying the poison to the heart, just to make sure, just to make  _ absolutely sure _ that the King dies. Fleeing through the gardens and over the fence and into the forest, a roundabout way home, notes to send and coins to spend, not caring about the cooling corpse left in the snow.

Ah. This is where they take his life.

Dimitri whirls around and catches the arm that is coming at him with the knife, crushes the wrist in the same motion - but the knife is already flying into the other hand that is rushing up from waist level, aimed at his neck. Dimitri jerks to the side - the man lets out a strangled grunt as it pulls on his shattered wrist and kicks out, landing a solid hit on Dimitri’s thigh that makes him stagger on the packed snow.

Dimitri lets the man go and swings with his free hand, but he ducks and tries to take him on from the side, but Dimitri turns his head, determined not to let the void swallow him even for a second, and so notices the lunge in time, though an icy patch under his feet slows him down enough for the man get so close that the knife slices through Dimitri’s thick coat.

The cold air rushes in, a burst of pain - real or not? Dimitri does not have the time to check. Thinks, foolishly, about ruining Annette’s gloves with blood.

He is unarmed, which feels like poor judgement in retrospect. Perhaps he should have expected something like this to happen.

Maybe the ghosts are right. Maybe Dimitri deserves this violence after all the violence he himself has inflicted. Maybe this is the only way he can atone for it all, when everything else proves to be insufficient.

But his body acts faster where his mind stalls, and once his fist connects with the man’s head he crumples to the ground, knocked clean out.

Dimitri takes a step back from him after kicking the knife away from his slack fingers, and looks up at the sky for a moment, watching the steam of his panting breaths curl up and dissipate in the chill air. The same air slithers in through the cut in his clothes, claws at his side, but his hand - quickly ungloved - comes away dry. Not this time, then.

Dimitri searches the man until he finds a length of rope, binds his wrists and ankles, and hauls him back to the palace.

*

“Are you  _ absolutely insane?!” _ Felix rages, though the effect is slightly dampened by the melting snow covering his chest and shoulders and hat - he decided to forego changing out of his outerwear in favour of immediately seeking Dimitri out and giving him an earful. “Do you actually  _ want _ to die? Are we back to fucking  _ Porcupine Dimitri??” _

“Felix,” Dimitri winces as a glop of wet snow plops onto the wooden floor of the library. “You might be overreacting.”

_ “Overre-- _ oh don’t even fucking try me, boar,” Felix hisses, though, objectively, Dimitri is not the one who has just ridden all the way from the Fraldarius capital to Fhirdiad in three days, which should not be possible on winter roads. There are snowflakes melting on his eyelashes and eyebrows, clinging to the stubble on his cheeks. “Answer me. What possessed you to go outside, at night, with no guards and no weapons? Do you  _ want _ to get killed?”

Dimitri sighs, shifting in his armchair. Coming from Felix, it is probably a rhetorical question, but he cannot help but try to find an answer to it all the same.

Does he want to die? Not anymore, maybe. Not necessarily - not too often, at least. But something dark stirs in him sometimes, the same thing that made him pause and wonder if maybe he deserved this. It feels pleasant sometimes to entertain the thought of - not dying, maybe, but just...not existing. Of getting to rest, for a while - but that is only natural with how much strain all of them are under, is it not?

Dimitri looks at Felix, suddenly alarmed. If that is true - does Felix want to die as well?

Well, not  _ die, _ but.

He does work as hard as Dimitri. He does, too, wake up gasping and shivering from nightmares of his own.

“Felix, are you alright?” Dimitri asks on an impulse, needing to make sure.

Felix physically reels back, stunned.

“I…um,” he gapes briefly before regaining his ire.  _ “Don’t.” _

“I assure you, I do not have a deathwish.” Not really, anyway. Not truly. Not...actively. “It was an honest mistake. Not the last time I miss something crucial,” he says around a self-deprecating laugh.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Felix demands.

Dimitri watches as more snow falls off of Felix’s shoulders. There is already a slushy puddle forming around his feet. Whoever has to clean this up is not going to be thrilled.

“Alright, actually, that’s not important,” Felix decides. “You’re going to wear a protective layer from now on, especially since you don’t have your gauntlets anymore. A vest or something.  _ Don’t _ argue with me,” he jabs a finger at Dimitri when he opens his mouth. “And don’t get so stupid again the moment I leave. I’m your advisor, not your bodyguard.”

_ ‘You do not have to protect me’ _ is the ready response, right on the tip of Dimitri’s tongue, but he will not disrespect Felix so.

“Very well,” he says instead, and gets to see some of the tension unspool from the line of Felix’s shoulders.

Felix seems to suddenly realize how much snow he has brought in, and makes an aborted motion towards the doors but then comes to the conclusion that by now, the damage is already done. He takes off his hat and runs a hand through his spiky hair, trying to get it to behave. He has been growing it out, Dimitri notices. “Do we already know who ordered it?”

“We do,” Dimitri sighs and finally closes the  _ ‘History of the Liberation Era’ _ tome resting in his lap. Felix is going to love this. “It was actually Count Rowe.”

Felix curses and gloats at the same time. “Fucking  _ knew _ it. Where is he now?”

Dimitri frowns, tracing an embossed pattern on the cover. The grooves dip under his fingers. “Escaped to Albinea. Apparently he had a ship on standby in case his plan did not work out. We sent a letter to their court to warn them about him, but whether they decide to let him live there in exile or send him back is unclear.”

Albinea has very different principles from Faerghus when it comes to crime and punishment. Still, even if they decide to keep Rowe there, it is not like Dimitri is going to go to war overseas just to punish one person for a crime he, Dimitri, failed to foresee.

“He can freeze there for all I care,” Felix scowls, obviously of the same opinion. “What about the county?”

Dimitri sighs, thinking back to the letter that came in two days ago. “It was actually one of his knights who figured out what was happening. Uh - Lady Themis Skild. She said she had been suspecting Hyxamon of something dishonourable for a while, and when she found out he was preparing a ship it all came together. She tried to stop him, too, but he slipped away.”

“And?” Felix prompts. “What, you gave her the county?”

“Ah - yes. It was - the letter came with quite a number of signatures, vouching for the truth of her words and the courage she has displayed in her pursuit.” The entire capital city of Rhoda’s worth of signatures, at the very least. “She will be flying in in time for the coronation, so we will hold a ceremony for her, too.”

“Is she trustworthy?” Felix asks with his eyes narrowed.

“I thought you would be thrilled to be rid of the Rowe family?”

“Oh believe me, I am,” Felix barks out a laugh, sharp and vindictive. “Doesn’t mean I won’t be checking her.”

“That is only reasonable,” Dimitri nods and smiles. “Can you imagine - she is the youngest of seven children and the only daughter. There is something poetic about it, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Felix finally decides to shrug out of his overcoat, shedding the last of the melted snow onto the floorboards. “They will write songs about Lady Skild and her bravery that won her the favour of the Saviour King.”

“My, Felix,” Dimitri grins up at him, feigning surprise. “Is it envy I detect? Would you also like a song to commemorate your feats of glory, perhaps?”

Felix sputters and groans, committing casual treason as he smacks Dimitri on the head with his wet hat that smells of cathair.  _ “Fuck _ no, I’m already sick of all the variations on the topic of  _ ‘The King And The Shield’.” _

And so it is settled. The crisis is averted, the paperwork for Skild is prepared, and Dimitri is presented with a vest of wyvern skin. But as the city prepares for the second coronation in not even half a year, he finds himself going back to Felix’s question, again and again. 

Why did he go out unarmed? It did not use to be so - he used to carry a blade, or at least a guard would carry an extra for him whenever he would leave the palace grounds. So that night - why did he leave without one? Even after all the sudden and terrible pain he has forced himself to live through, parsing out the probabilities? 

Something gloomy and muddy shifts in Dimitri at all of this, yawns, settles again, leaving smears on his ribs. Something he has not paid attention to before. 

Something he should not pay attention to now either, probably. 

The coronation is soon, and there is too much to be done.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs are  
> \- big depressive episode  
> \- my ignorant attempts to rig up a democratic government system while knowing exactly nothing about how any of this works, just handwave it, please
> 
> also if you wish to read about the times where it all Does go wrong, my fic "Ever After" is basically a prophet-less AU to this fic. please do mind the tags - that one does not end well.

_ out of my traitorous head, _

_ on a wild guess into the dark, _

_ in the middle of a feast, through the crows, through the crowd, _

_ through the guards, through the gates, through the grounds, just so that _

_ I could stand on the bridge for a while _

Dimitri flings a letter away from himself, dropping his face into his hands as a shuddering sigh leaves him.

Oh please, not now. He is so busy.

It has been happening more and more lately, and especially following the coronation. He seems to be doing alright, and then all of a sudden just one small thing tips him over into the pit of indescribable despair - completely out of nowhere. Ridiculous how it makes him feel. Laughable how he cannot seem to find a way to make it stop.

Dimitri cannot even remember what set it off this time - he barely comprehended the contents of the letter as his eye blurred with sudden exhausted tears. It was something innocuous, mundane - Duke Mateus’s report on the winter fishing troubles, probably - a problem, of course, though nothing Dimitri can do about from Fhirdiad.

He  _ should _ be able to, though, should he not? What kind of king is he if he cannot help his people?

But he does not even  _ know  _ anything about fishing, how would he…

Dimitri growls in frustration, rubbing a forceful hand over his face. He does not have time to wallow or to cry. He has work to do.

Draft a response to the Duke. He can do that.

The letter ended up on the floor, as it turns out. Dimitri can see the corner of it from where he is sitting at his desk. Getting up feels impossible.

Well. Alright. He can always come back to it later. It is not like it will go anywhere.

None of this ever will.

There is always something to do, and every solved issue dredges up three more in its place. Every day the mountain of work only becomes more daunting, but there is nothing for Dimitri to do but throw himself at it. It would be so tempting to just put it all down, to step away for a moment - but there is no time to waste. Something is always happening: grains go mouldy, rivers freeze over too deeply, illnesses break out, worries threaten to bloom into rebellions - the stitches are in place, but they are bleeding. There is so, so much to do, visions or no, and it is unending, and Dimitri is just one person.

And there is still so much he does not know about ruling, things Father would have taught him - or Uncle  _ should  _ have taught him, or the professors at Garreg Mach could have taught him if it all did not go to hell not even a year in. And so Dimitri reads obsessively and invites tutors to fill in the numerous gaps in his education, but it never seems enough.

His heart is wintersick and eroded with never-ending worry, with the constant feeling that nothing he  _ does _ is enough, either.

Dimitri was waiting for this to happen for so long. Waited for his revenge, then for the end of the war, then for the unification of the continent - and now it is done. The ceremonial crown, brand new and befitting the King of the United Kingdom of Fódlan, was so heavy it wore a painful groove into the skin of his forehead over the two hours he had to wear it, and he still feels its ghostly weight crushing his head.

The continent is united under one ruler. It is done.

Dimitri is done.

He has never given much thought to what would come next, not outside of the visions anyway. And now he is still here, and still alive, and the long-held breath expels from his lungs but he forgot how to breathe in again.

Dimitri feels...precarious, always. Too little time has passed since the war - he wonders sometimes if it will ever truly fade into the past and release its hold on all of them - and everything has this unsteady, temporary quality to it, no matter how solid it may seem. Dimitri does not wear his armour anymore - it is not very fitting for what is essentially a desk job, as it turns out - but without the weight of it he feels so terribly insubstantial, like he could simply float away if he is not careful.

There is too little of Dimitri left. Parts of him are missing, irreparably damaged or lost, and more of whatever is holding him together seeps out of the tears with every breath that he manages to take.

His nights are bad, even when Felix is there, but that is nothing new. His nightmares continue into the waking world, but that is hardly sensational either.

Time moves in stutters. He loses chunks of it again. He barely even remembers the coronation. Something that was supposed to be the most triumphant moment of his life, and he remembers nothing except for the accursed, squeezing weight on his head.

The ghosts are almost a constant presence, filling in the fluttering, unraveling gaps and tears, a pack of hounds on Dimitri’s heels, relentless and without mercy. 

“Why are you here?” Dimitri begs them, their sad, smoke-shaped silhouettes, when he cannot take it any longer. “I did everything I could, why are you still here?”

But they never listen. Force him to listen to them, instead.

“Unworthy,” they say then. “Unworthy.”

Maybe he had enough stamina, enough stubbornness, enough - whatever it was - to get him this far, and ran out of it in the darkness, at the last shuddering stretch of winter, under the harsh, hungry glare of the Lone Moon.

Or maybe it is just the way it is going to be. Which means Dimitri has to adjust. Simple as that.

And adjust he does. He works more and sleeps less - it does not bring him relief anyway and is only a waste. Food has never held much interest for him either. Training, reading, riding are unnecessary distractions that he can never commit to even when he tries because his mind is constantly reminded of the unappealable passage of time - time that he could be spending doing something useful.

But the adjustment does not come easily to Dimitri, of course, flawed as he is. His head is a constant throb of pain, and his eye is always tired from squinting at unreadable handwritings, and by the time he notices himself rubbing his forehead it has already become a bad habit, one he has not allowed himself in years.

Dimitri cries sometimes in the privacy of his office, not out of sadness but sheer exhaustion, yet pulls himself willfully together after the first sob wrenches itself out of his chest and gets back to work because he has no time to waste on crying. Every tear he does shed feels like a needle.

This is nothing Dimitri has not been prepared for,  _ born  _ for. He is the King. He must act accordingly. 

But the thought of this continuing for - oh Goddess, years and years and years, every day until his last - oh, it curls dreadfully in his chest, sinks into his stomach, a weak, shameful notion, a horrible realization.

Living feels like an impossible ordeal.

He is still mad. Still mad, and weak, and sick in the head, and it will never go away.

Dimitri stares down at his desk again through the thick smokescreen of quiet, red-rimmed despair. The haphazard stacks of papers waiting for his attention stare back.

What does any of this even matter.

What did it ever matter when...

The door opens and Felix impatiently forces his way through the gap instead of waiting for it to widen. “Dimitri. Why are you still up.”

“Hello, Felix.” Dimitri takes him in. He is dressed for the outdoors, but the heavy cloak is dry. “I was just taking some notes in response to Duke Mateus’s report.” Which is not technically a lie. His involuntary break simply stretched a bit too far. Probably. Dimitri is not really sure how long he has been sitting here.

“Do you even know what hour it is?” Felix’s lip curls. “Go to bed. It’s too late for anything else.”

Dimitri tilts his head pointedly at his attire.

Felix scoffs. “I’m going  _ out. _ That’s not work.”

Ah. Understandable. Dimitri wonders blearily what Felix is going to be up to while out.

He is strange like this, sometimes. Distant. Angry, though Dimitri does not get the impression that his anger is directed at him, more that Felix is just...unhappy.

Dimitri frowns. He does not like the thought of him being unhappy, but no matter what he tries to do to help, nothing seems to work.

“Of course nothing works,” Glenn huffs, his outline stark against the void. “He knows you’re gonna snap. He’s just waiting for it, like the rest of them are. So they can put you down with a clean conscience.”

Dimitri flinches away, presses his teeth together until it hurts, but it does nothing to drown out the heartache.

“You’re nodding off already,” Felix speaks again, making Dimitri realize that he forgot to answer. He leans his shoulder against the doorframe for a moment, and his voice sounds just a touch softer. “Don’t fall asleep here like a fool.”

Dimitri huffs out a laugh that does not sound humorous even to his own ears. “Do not worry, Felix.”

Sleep has taken offence at Dimitri’s neglect of it and now avoids Dimitri in turn. There really is very little chance that he will sleep tonight.

So, again, his response is not strictly a lie.

A whisper that does not sound like a ghost, something bold enough to stand out from the rest; Dimitri reaches for it on instinct. The whisper resolves itself into a shape: some of the times, this is when Felix walks over to give him a quick kiss.

Not this time, though.

Felix rolls his eyes. “See you tomorrow.”

“Have a good night,” Dimitri responds to a closing door.

It stays slightly ajar - doubtlessly as a way for Felix to drive his point home.

It would work normally, probably. Dimitri already spends too many of his waking hours under constant scrutiny and so prefers not to have stray witnesses to his work - or his far too frequent moments of weakness. And if he gets up to shut the door properly, he might as well leave the office and go to bed.

But also - Dimitri has dismissed the guards for the night hours ago. Dedue is still in Duscur, scheduled to arrive within a week, if weather permits. Felix has just left. 

There is nobody else.

A draft snakes its way through the door, worries the cooling coals in the hearth into shallow breaths of wine red.

Dimitri pulls the air in and lets his shoulders fall and press it back out of his lungs. In the silent pause before the next inhale, he can hear his heart’s sluggish thuds.

The stiff vest presses into his ribs. But what is the point of it if all the damage is on the inside?

Felix is right. Dimitri should go to bed - he is useless here like this. And so, so tired. Maybe he would be able to fall asleep, after all, even if the ghosts are bound to rouse him shortly afterwards anyway. 

He just needs to get up and go.

But his body will not move, chained down and heavy and morose.

Dimitri sits, unmoving, in the quivering light. The candle burns out, a waste.

*

_ “Out,”  _ Felix’s voice is a whip crack, splitting the air. “Everybody, out.”

Dimitri hides his face in his hands, burning with overwhelming shame. His head hurts.

“What the hell is wrong.” Felix’s voice grows closer once everyone files out, the city’s petitioners they were having a round table with. 

Dimitri only shakes his head. Maybe Felix will leave him alone. Maybe he will leave him be.

His gloves are soaking up the moisture.

He is fine. He is  _ fine. _

“You’re not ‘fine’,” Felix snaps - Dimitri must have said it out loud.

“I am,” he argues anyway, irritation prickling the dark mist. “I am simply a little bit tired.”

Felix snorts. Dimitri feels the minute vibrations through his elbows as Felix leans against the table next to him. “Right. Try again.”

Dimitri feels his lips twitch, an aborted motion to bare his teeth. “Maybe not a little bit. Maybe just tired,” he amends.

“Did you sleep last night?”

Dimitri does not really remember. But evidently Felix chose to stay in his own quarters - or maybe he did not come back to the palace at all.

Dimitri has not been this consistently insomniac since...probably the academy days. He is not thrilled at the reminder of how much one can grow to rely on sleep to separate one day from the next.

Right now, it is just one endless ‘today’.

Dimitri shrugs. His face feels hot. The space in the centre of his back is cold.

He is fine. He does not feel like crying, truly. Does not know why he  _ did _ start crying. Out of nowhere. In a  _ meeting,  _ of all places, what a disgrace. Not even crying, strictly put - just tears suddenly welling up and spilling over. A physical occurrence, nothing more.

Anyway, he is not doing that anymore. They can proceed.

They  _ need _ to, in fact, before Dimitri’s grasp slips completely and he lands in the fog that smells so scarily like the damp fields of Gideon two, three, five years ago. Before his heart stutters too insistently, like it did back then.

Hm. Maybe he never really left those fields. That would make sense.

The ghosts are hanging in the fog, he knows. Maybe they  _ are _ the fog.

“Tell me what’s happening,” Felix demands. His voice is sharp, an edge of a sheathed blade. “Are you slipping? Is this what it is?”

A prickle of - fear? - on the tip of the thorn.

Dimitri lowers his hands to the table, watches his numb fingers flex, watches the tiny folds of the fabric. “I don’t know.” He really is so tired of all of it, so tired, so  _ done. _ “It’s  _ fine.” _

“Will you bloody…” Felix cuts himself off. Dimitri sees him sit on the table properly; his left foot comes up to Dimitri’s armrest and he leans his knee against Dimitri’s side. 

The touch is light, but it is there. It feels real. More real than anything else around Dimitri right now. More real than Dimitri himself.

Felix twists around until he can grab an unused sheet of paper and dip a quill and start scribbling, propping the sheet on his bent knee.

Dimitri wonders if he is supposed to ask Felix about it. He considers making a questioning noise, but even that is too much effort.

He was functioning just fine earlier today. Reading things, holding conversations. Why does it feel so surreal now?

“I’m writing to Mercedes,” Felix mutters and turns to dip the quill again. “I’d write to Dedue too, but if he’s on the move already, the bird won’t find him anyway.”

“Why?” Dimitri asks even as his stomach sinks with dread.

Felix huffs, mirthless. “Because you’re not dealing with it and I sure as hell have no clue what to do about it.”

And so his plan is to call Mercedes away from her work, from her hospital - to burden her, and to burden Dedue, who already has so much on his plate - and all because of Dimitri’s incompetency, his glaring mistakes, his howling mind.

“Felix, no.” he summons all his decisiveness and makes an attempt to grab the paper, but Felix is faster and holds it out of his reach with a scornful expression. Does he not understand? “Don’t tell them,” he says, hating how pleading it comes out in the end.

He is not a child and will not be treated like one.

Felix pins him with a glare. “Are you even hearing yourself right now? How do you propose we deal with it, then? Just let you - what? Lose your mind again?”

“But there is no ‘we’, is there?” Glenn’s voice oozes in from the void. “Unless we’re talking about a team to put down a sick animal.”

Dimitri flinches. “You do not need to worry them,” he insists. “They do  _ not _ need the distraction.”

“You should’ve thought of this sooner, then,” Felix scowls and pushes against the armrest with his foot, scooting further down the table. “Before it got  _ this _ bad.”

Dimitri wants to argue, to say that it is not that bad, that he has definitely had worse, but the truth is - well.

The truth is, he does not feel particularly alive.

The thought sinks into him like an iron weight, stinking of moss and mud. Oh.

Maybe he does need help.

“I didn’t mean for it to,” Dimitri mumbles and turns his face away, wishing for a moment that Felix would have chosen to sit on his blind side.

“Shut up,” Felix mutters back, his eyes averted.  _ “I  _ should’ve done something about this sooner, at least, if you’re incapable of articulating it yourself.”

Oh. Maybe Dimitri is not the only one with a weight pulling his heart down.

He looks at Felix again, at the angry slant of his mouth.

“It’s alright, Felix,” Dimitri tells him.

Felix stares at him for a moment in what feels like disbelief, then returns to his note.

“Don’t even try.”

*

Time used to move in stutters.

Now, it...struggles to regain its flow.

*

“Are you ready?” Felix pokes his head into the office and frowns. He’s pulling his gloves on as he takes in the sight of Dimitri at his desk, neck-deep in paperwork. “We’re having lunch in the city with Annette.”

“Oh - right. I’m sorry. I forgot.”

“Just finish up here so we aren’t late.”

Soon they are walking towards the exit from the palace, and Felix makes a contemplative sound in preparation to speak.

“How many assistants do you have?” he asks.

Dimitri glances at him, but he is looking ahead. Watered down shadows brush his profile as the two of them pass by the tall windows, one after another.

“Um - I have Cholchis,” he says.

“Yeah, I remember  _ her,” _ Felix waves it off. “Who else?”

Well. With the treasury constantly teetering on the brink of being busted and whatever funds they scrounge up getting immediately poured into things the country actually needs, a lot of the staff has been redirected to employers who can pay more reliably. Which suits Dimitri just fine: having people fuss over his every move, up to and including getting him dressed in the mornings, is something he does not miss at all from his childhood days.

“Alright, you know what, don’t answer that,” Felix shakes his head. “We’re getting you a team to deal with the paperwork.”

“Felix - there’s a reason I let them go.”

“Which is?” Felix glances at him and away again, a quick flick of steel. “Overworking yourself until you keel over?”

“It’s  _ my _ work,” Dimitri says, though even the words themselves exhaust him.

“Don’t give me that. No one is going to be ‘shouldering your burden’ or whatever you think this is. People get  _ paid _ for it.”

Dimitri tenses, inspecting the uncomfortable feeling of Felix striking too close to the core.

“Like it or not, things are about to change,” Felix says when Dimitri fails to respond yet again. “Either someone sorts through your paperwork before it comes to you, or it stays unfinished. Your choice.”

The image of Dimitri’s office melts out to the forefront of his mind, the stuffy air of it, the endless papers. Unwittingly, he reaches up to pull at his collar that is suddenly too tight.

“Alright,” he swallows. “But no more than two people.”

Felix snorts. “Are you serious? Ten at the very minimum.”

“Five.”

“Fine.” 

When Dimitri glances at Felix again, the satisfied curl of his lips reminds Dimitri how terrible he is at bargaining.

*

It turns out that once all the work is sorted and grouped and evaluated, the things that actually require Dimitri’s personal attention only take up about half of it. He tries to sneak in more work in the resulting free time and immediately finds out the exact reason behind Felix’s choices for his team: absolutely everyone, from mild-mannered Heather and startlingly sharp if timid Gildё to the pedantic Larno twins and Jodun, a man who Dimitri would sooner guess to be a brawler rather than a secretary, firmly refuse to let him work a second longer than what is agreed upon.

At first he thinks that Felix has simply instilled the wrath of, well, Felix in them, and they do not want to become the subjects of his ire when he comes to pick Dimitri up and finds him still working, but they are just as adamant even on the days when Felix is elsewhere.

Dimitri, naively, thinks this change to his routine to be a singular occurrence, but his friends quickly prove him wrong. 

Dedue introduces him to a Duscuri tea blend that is supposed to help calm an over-excited mind. Dimitri spends the first week of dutifully drinking it in a stupored haze, which, he supposes,  _ is _ a way to calm his ghosts, but then his body seems to adjust and the haze begins to clear, and two weeks in, Dimitri sleeps through the entire night and wakes up with his head quiet. The look on his face must be wondrous enough to startle a half-asleep Felix into full wakefulness, which in turn prompts a laugh from Dimitri, which then compels Felix to find a way to shut him up, which, well - waking up early does mean some precious free time that can be spent as one sees fit.

Mercedes checks in with him as well, though when she asks Dimitri quickly makes sure she knows that there is nothing to be done about his headaches. Instead, she catches him squinting and asks after his eyesight, and soon enough a messenger comes from the hospital with a vial of eyedrops and a note of instructions.

A better sleeping schedule is another of Mercedes’s suggestions, made in that way of hers that means it is not a suggestion at all, now that Dimitri is a lot less busy. But his ability to sleep being what it is, they eventually settle on him at least trying to stick to something approaching regular, if not sufficient, resting hours. And in the free time before that he is encouraged to exercise, go riding or on walks - and it feels ridiculous at first, but Dimitri finds that he does have a better chance at falling asleep when he gets to spend some time outdoors.

His friends catch onto that rather quickly and seem happy to coax him outside whenever possible. Annette and Ingrid invite him to new establishments that open in Fhirdiad as the new trade routes begin to pump it with resources, and even though he is unable to appreciate the cuisine, it warms his heart to see the budding prosperity where could just as easily have been desolation and loss.

Mercedes hesitates to go away from her hospital at first, but then laughs and decides to follow her own advice - with her, they usually go wandering in the streets, both to reacquaint themselves with the changed city and to take note of what needs the most attention. Even though it is still work to some degree, Mercedes makes for a pleasant, soothing company with suddenly piercing insights, and Dimitri finds his mind resting anyway.

Dedue has taken up gardening again, when he is not working on the Duscur affairs or helping out Mercedes. The royal greenhouses that were established three kings ago during a great famine, a communal space to support the population, were stripped bare under the occupation, forcing people to retreat to their homes and privately grow what they could in their gardens. 

But now the patched up buildings are filling with greenery again, hot and humid even with the ground around them covered with snow, and Dimitri kneels next to Dedue and buries his fingers in the damp earth - wearing another pair of gloves over Annette’s, of course - and from there on out it is simple, the weeding, the pruning, the watering. Life springs from the soil all around him, and there is probably a metaphor hiding somewhere, but Dimitri is more than content to simply be a part of this.

Sylvain, meanwhile, insists on going out wearing disguises. They are sometimes not very comfortable and often silly, and Dimitri is not sure at first if there is any use  _ trying _ to disguise him. But then House Goneril sends Almyran fireworks for the new year celebration, and after all the ceremonies Felix, Sylvain, and Ingrid sneak him away and change and go out into the crowd to watch the bright flares slice through the sky like dragons or firebirds with bushy tails. And Dimitri watches with his head tipped back, transfixed, and gentle snow is landing on his face, and Sylvain is ribbing Ingrid about something, but Felix is quiet and contemplative next to him.

It is not smooth. Far from it, in fact - sometimes, the marshy waters run too cold and the ghosts in them hold on to him too tightly, and Dimitri loses entire days again, thrown into the familiar murk, and wanders the palace at night like a wraith, the cadence of his footsteps echoing off of granite just like it did marble. He still does the work he is supposed to do, still listens and nods and says things, but the husk of his skin is empty and cold. Sometimes, it feels like there is no progress to be done. Nothing  _ to _ fix.

On one of those nights, Dimitri wanders into a storage room. This has become a habit of his by now, and he picks his way effortlessly through the cluttered space in the dark, pulled inwards by an invisible string.

He does not need to go far. The object that calls to him was too big and bulky for the staff to get it deeper into the room without rearranging everything first.

The big frame is covered with an old velvet curtain, its creases heavy with dust in places where it brushes the floor every time Dimitri pulls it down.

He does it again.

In the moonlight, the portrait is revealed.

Sir Wainefort asked for Dimitri’s presence only a handful of times as he was thumbnailing the painting, and later did most of the work in his studio. He firmly refused to ‘ruin the surprise’, an anticipatory gleam to his eye, and so the first time Dimitri got to see it was the day before his coronation.

The resemblance is both striking and incomprehensible. It is undoubtedly him, Dimitri, even if his features are given more definition than they have in reality and his hair is smooth and shiny and artfully blown by the wind, and the armour his double is wearing is a vision of clean, sharp, elegant lines with the fluffiest, most luxurious cloak. Even the eyepatch over the ruin of his eye somehow gives him a dignified air instead of just making him look misshapen. 

It is...disconcerting. It never fails to confuse Dimitri, this way of viewing him that other people seem to have. The way he is made to seem taller and broader and...just overall better than he actually is.

His double looks good - great, even. Even if Dimitri could never imagine himself like that, he can still admit that Wainefort has done an outstanding job, especially considering the time constraints he was under.

The only problem is that the painting depicts Dimitri striking Edelgard down. 

She is lying prostrate at his feet, her dress dirty and torn, Aymr cracked with its Crest stone bled out. Areadbhar is carving its way through between her shoulder blades, and her face is a terrible grimace of fury and hatred, teeth bared, tongue forked. The lines are more careless where she is thrown into the shadows, a far cry from the scrupulosity of Dimitri’s image, and even her eye colour is not lavender but a hellish red.

Dimitri swallows, remembering the first time he saw the portrait, still shiny with varnish. The way blood suddenly turned cold and stiff in his veins. The way bile inched up his throat.

Felix raged afterwards, while Dimitri was too furious and hurting to allow himself to speak, afraid that he would kill a man right in front of his court with his bare hands. Felix was happy to tear into Wainefort instead, gleeful to remind him that this was the coronation that was supposed to  _ unite _ Faerghus and Adrestia, and that immediately starting another war over an offensive portrait would prove to be counterproductive to say the least.

Wainefort was paid for the materials and half of his time and banished from Fhirdiad back to Charon. 

And the portrait wound up in one of the storage rooms, where Dimitri had come across it by pure accident. He saw the gilded frame peeking out from behind the curtain and knew immediately what it was, and he chose to look at it anyway - and this is where he inevitably finds himself straying to most of the nights he cannot sleep. Stepmother is with them on some of those nights. Usually silent. Crying sometimes. Dimitri wonders what she would have said to this if she were still alive - though it is probably for the better that she did not live to see it.

Every time Dimitri pulls the curtain off the painting, he feels the fissure in him grow bigger. The darkness converges thicker, its layers stiffening like the generous slabs of oil paint. The paths that lead anywhere but into the deeper darkness grow fainter.

Dimitri examines the feeling, the not-sensation that always comes from the corridor growing narrower and narrower with every step he chooses to take down its length.

Because he does - that is the simple truth. He does choose.

He does choose to come here night after night and let it tear deeper into him.

In all the times he does not get better, the portrait is there.

Dimitri looks down at Edelgard. Mouths an apology, covers the painting again, and leaves. Stepmother stays behind, stifling a sob.

Back in his chambers, the bed is empty. But the curtains have been drawn aside, revealing the balcony doors, and so Dimitri steps outside as well and quickly closes the doors again to keep the warm air in.

Felix is leaning on the railings. The balcony overlooks the gardens, and beyond, nighttime Fhirdiad twinkles with rare lights. The New Year’s Wake was a few days ago, and some evidently still struggle to go back to sleeping at night.

The memory of the wake is slurred and muted in Dimitri’s mind. A part of him finds it strange to hold a separate event for it when he has spent most of his life stuck in one. The rest of him understands that  _ he _ is the unfortunate exception here.

“Back?” Felix speaks without turning around. He is wearing Dimitri’s thick coat over his nightclothes.

The night is freezing. Dimitri breathes it in, feels the cold gouge him to life.

“Yes,” he says and steps up to stand next to Felix. “Is everything alright?”

Months after the war, Felix has slowly started to learn to relax enough that he usually does not wake up when Dimitri gets up to wander - and if he does, he is usually asleep again by the time Dimitri gets back. That is progress - Dimitri suspects that the Lone Moon reminder of how sick he could be has rattled Felix. But now he is up.

“Hm.” Felix’s eyes narrow at something in the distance. He pulls his shoulders up against the cold. “Uncle wants me to come to Fraldarius, apparently. Not that I’m going.”

“Oh.” Dimitri frowns, rifles through his recent memories, through the reports that his team has deemed important enough to reach him. “I was not aware there was - trouble in Fraldarius?”

“No trouble,” Felix waves him off. “You didn’t miss anything - it was private correspondence. Uncle being overly dramatic. My old man agrees with me.”

“What is the issue?”

“The  _ aunties _ are worried about Skild getting Rowe’s land,” Felix’s lip curls in distaste. “Specifically because she doesn’t have a Crest.  _ That’s _ what concerns them, enough that they’re being pissy and anxious on the literal opposite side of the continent, never mind that most of them are Crestless themselves.”

Dimitri raises an eyebrow. “So Skild bothers them, but Ashe does not?”

“Ashe is a different story, apparently,” Felix shrugs in response. “Because he was your general and all that.”

“Hm. But what does it have to do with you?”

“Uncle says I can - reassure them, or something. Tell them that ‘the tradition is strong and unshakeable’ and that you ‘don’t actually intend to give their lands to the commoners’.”

Dimitri can’t help but laugh at the thought, even if it comes out somewhat wistful. “Wouldn’t  _ that _ be something.”

“Hmph, hear,” Felix snorts. “People thinking with their Crests are insufferable. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but Sylvain might be onto something with how he chooses to think with his dick instead.”

“Truly the paragon in our fight against the injustices of the world,” Dimitri agrees with a smile.

It is something that has been lurking in the back of his mind for a while - the Crest system, not Sylvain - and now that the ghosts are quieter and the fog seems to lift sometimes, it makes itself known again.

Dimitri thinks back to the accursed portrait. Edelgard wanted a world without the Crests in play. Are they all destined to come to the same conclusions in the end?

But thinking of the cold and dusty storage room reminds Dimitri of something much simpler to fix, in comparison. “Listen,” he says and waits for Felix to grunt in response. “I think I need something to keep my mind busy when I fail to sleep anyway.”

Felix nods, pauses, nods again. “If this is your way to cram in more working hours, I’m telling Dedue.”

“Hah, no,” Dimitri lets out a startled laugh. “No. Just something to keep myself occupied. So I don’t have time to...well.”

Felix finally turns to look at him, purses his lips at his state of undress. “Let’s move back inside. What do you have in mind then?”

*

It turns out that there is not actually that much Dimitri can do at night. Annette’s gloves allow him a lot more freedom than the gauntlets ever did, opening a seemingly wide range of possibilities. Dimitri considers picking up needlework or perhaps learning to play music, hire someone nocturnal to teach him. But he quickly realizes that even when he cannot sleep, he is often too tired and bleary to focus on something that requires a lot of concentration.

Gardening would be an obvious option - taking care of Mother’s herbal garden, specifically, a birthmark of life on the skin of frozen earth - but it lies quite a way from the palace, and trudging through the snow at night is an experience Dimitri does not long to repeat. Perhaps he will revisit the idea once spring finally lurches in properly.

Nothing that would require going outside, so no riding, though it would probably be inadvisable in the dark anyway. No excessive physical exertion either, because without the ability to sleep it would only drain him into a useless stupor. And Dimitri holds no interest for painting or writing or doing any sort of crafts, what desire there might have once been starved into nothingness by his disability.

The answer comes when Dimitri least expects it. He rounds the corner of a hallway, on his way to meet the heads of Fhirdiad’s merchant families, and the guard positioned there hastens to snap to attention. He fumbles with something the size of a child’s closed fist and drops it, the object clacking against the floor before it rolls to a stop. The man - Dimitri recognizes him, it is Sigran, one of Ingrid’s people - rattles off an apology and quickly bends down to pick it back up.

“Sir Sigran - no need,” Dimitri waves off his words, his gaze drawn to where the knight has hidden the object behind his back. What  _ was _ it? “May I ask after your possession?”

“Just a distraction, Your Majesty, will not happen again,” Sigran replies, staring fixedly at the wall ahead of him.

“That is not what I meant. May I please see it?”

“Oh - of course, my lord. Please.” He hurries to offer the object in his cupped hands, bowing at the waist.

It seems to be - a wooden toy of some sort, a complex yet symmetrical geometrical shape. Dimitri turns it over carefully in his hands, but it offers him no insights.

“What is it?”

“It’s a puzzle, my lord,” Sigran answers. “The player has to find a way to separate the pieces from each other.”

Pieces…? Dimitri looks closer and realizes that the toy - the puzzle - indeed, consists of several parts that interlock seemingly without any give. 

“But how do you…” he begins, confused, and gives one of the parts a very cautious tug, mindful of his strength. It does not budge. “Is there magic involved?”

“No, my lord, no magic, it’s - it’s about just finding a way to - uh…” Sigran does an awkward dance, obviously wanting to take the puzzle back but unsure if it would be a polite thing to do.

Dimitri saves him, offering him the toy. He is so hopelessly intrigued, all thoughts of the upcoming meeting gone from his mind.

“See, turns out that if you - press here and slide these parts at the same time and then - and then push, they…” Sigran does something complicated, and the toy falls apart in his hands, in half and in half again.

“Oh! It’s…” Dimitri considers the separated pieces, realizing in that moment that he had expected something to be inside. “It is empty? Then why do you open it?”

“To - well, to figure out how to put it back together,” Sigran grins helplessly, rolls the pieces in his hands. “The hours are long, so it helps keep my mind active and busy - oh. I mean,” he stutters to a stop, aware of the implication.

Dimitri - has not given this thought before, actually. Standing guard all day must be a terribly boring job, no wonder people start seeking something to engage their minds with.

He is still so curious though. Could he solve a puzzle like this too?

“Did you make it yourself?” he asks.

“No, my lord, there is a - carpenter, down in the River District, by the name of Fesilda. They make these on the side, as entertainment.” Sigran seems to connect the dots. “If you wish, my lord - if it would not be too presumptuous...I would be happy for you to have it.”

He offers the toy again, in all its clacking disassembled glory, but Dimitri shakes his head, not about to rob the man of something clearly important to him.

“Please keep it. And I must go, but - in case I forget, would you be so kind to find Cholchis later and tell her the name of the carpenter? Fesilda, you said?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Sigran bows once more. “Gladly.”

Next time Sylvain comes to bully Dimitri out into the city, they take Felix and go down to the river together. Fesilda turns out to be a stocky person, shorter than even Felix, with thick glasses and an unshakably no-nonsense attitude that does not change even when they see through their cursory disguises.

For someone described as a hobbyist by Sigran, they turn out to have a truly impressive collection of the puzzles. Terribly out of his depth, Dimitri quickly confesses his ignorance, and after some discussion they settle on one of the simpler puzzles to start with - which Felix begrudgingly pays for, as after too many complaints from the Master of Coin about giving out money to beggars, Dedue banned Dimitri from carrying any on his person.

Which Dimitri finds entirely unfair, for the record. 

Solving the puzzle proves to be...equal parts frustrating and soothing. The dexterity and the special kind of savvy required are somewhat above Dimitri’s levels, but it is good practice for his hands - and the delight at finally solving it feels completely worth all the time spent trying. The beehive swarm of visions in Dimitri’s hands becomes disorienting at times, but in it hide the paths where he finds the right place to push and pull and turn, and the texture of polished wood, the gentle press of rounded edges and corners are warm and calming under his fingertips.

The puzzles keep Dimitri engaged and focused - and when his mind begins to wander too much, he retreats to the library to read, or stands on the balcony, watching Fhirdiad sleep, and waits for the warmer days.

Dimitri gets better - slowly, painfully. Get good days sometimes, sometimes even great ones, without the burden of ghosts, without the waterlogged feeling of not caring if he exists or not. Days like those make him wonder if life is supposed to feel like this. Wonders if all these years were nothing but a misery-filled waste.

*

“I am only saying that Duke Gideon has a point,” Dimitri muses as he surveys the board. Now, should he work on his dancing or try to catch that duke again? The latter would be risky, but success would put him  _ two  _ ranks above Felix.

“Gideon wouldn’t know what a point is even if it hit him in the face,” Felix quips and sets a small stack of wooden tokens on one of the promotion squares. “Rising to marchioness.”

Dimitri corrects himself.  _ One _ rank above Felix. The man is unfairly good at this.

The game is essentially a roleplay about the characters rising through the ranks at court - from a commoner doing the dishes in the kitchens to a royal consort. It is...tremendously not how it works in real life. A seamstress does not turn into a countess simply by flirting with the right non-player character at the right time and earning enough ‘influence tokens’ before the round on the board is complete.

_ ‘Lies and Loyalty’ _ was a birthday gift for Felix from Sylvain, which should have probably tipped them off when Felix first suggested that they play, too bored by the discussion to do nothing else at the same time. And so they settled in the drawing room of Dimitri’s private quarters - Felix in an armchair, Dimitri at the edge of a recliner - and set to unpacking the game. They assumed it was a strategy of some sort. Which, Dimitri supposes, it technically is.

Still, it turned out to be remarkably entertaining, even if wildly inaccurate.

Felix is winning so far - his character, a feisty and perspicacious young lady named Luisa, is already a marchioness, while Dimitri’s bookish and sweet Lyona - there really is something to be said about all the alliteration - has only recently been awarded a baronship.

Well, not all of them can be so lucky and catch the handsome but mysterious king brooding in the gardens beneath the moonlight. If Dimitri were a less honest man, he would suspect Felix of loading the dice somehow.

Still, neither he nor Lyona are about to give up. Dimitri trades some hard-earned tokens for a ‘random event’ card and grins at the calligraphic text before showing the card to Felix.

“‘ _ Bleeding Heart _ audience with the king’,” he informs him cheerfully. “Only for counts and below. Sorry, Felix.”

He is not sorry. He is having a  _ great  _ day.

“Flames,” Felix curses but waves it off in the next moment. “I’m not worried. You’ll fuck it up anyway, your ‘deceit’ skill level is abysmal.”

Which jolts them uncomfortably back to the topic at hand.

“As I was saying,” Dimitri taps a finger against his chin before moving Lyona’s figurine to the Grand Hall square for the event. “If not for Gideon, we would not even know about people migrating to him from the coast. Mateus did not consider it necessary to tell us his peasants were leaving.”

“That’s because Mateus is an asshole.” Felix rolls the dice and mutters a curse at the low number. “I told you this back in autumn and I’m saying it again: he is a poor fit. We should replace him.”

Dimitri shakes his head. “No. That would not solve the problem.” He is familiar enough by now with how dishonest people can be, how many games they might be playing in the shadows. They would just replace one liar with another. “I want more accountability. I want to hear more from the commoners.”

“Don’t you already?” Felix looks up at him with a grimace. “Half the time I need you for something, I find you settling disputes over whose cow toppled whose fence. You shouldn’t waste your time listening to every complaint, you know that, right? Since you’re the King and all?”

“But what do I do then, how can they reach me?” There has to be something. It is out there, simmering, waiting for Dimitri to grasp it. The right path to step onto. “Should I have - representatives, maybe?”

“You already do?” Felix scowls. “It’s called the council.”

“No, not the lords. They do not always tell me the whole truth, as you have pointed out many times,” Dimitri shakes his head, then stops as the ghostly outline suddenly solidifies in the murk. “No. The people.”

Felix pauses, contemplating the board with his fingers steepled in front of his face.

“Not following,” he says. “Do you want to bring - commoners into the council?”

“Not exactly.” Dimitri follows the thread, faster now that he seems to have grazed it with his fingers. “Not into the council itself, but perhaps - a separate entity that would work alongside the council. People representing not just the duchies and the counties, but the municipalities within, so that their problems can be assessed and addressed on a smaller, more detailed level than whatever their lords care to. Then we could - compare what information we get and get clarifications if something does not match.”

“What if the commoners lie for their lords? Then what?” Felix looks at him over his hands, the game forgotten.

Dimitri considers the question. “If the lord is well-loved enough that his people would lie for him, then it is likely that they are happy and treated well - in which case there is no need to lie in the first place. I know how much your father is doing for the common folk, for example - or Lady Charon - I would not expect the accounts to differ in their cases.”

There is a pause. “You’re serious about this.” Felix does not sound shocked or disbelieving; his gaze is calm and assessing. After all, he is long since used to Dimitri’s lunacy.

Dimitri smiles at the thought and is then surprised that he does.

They have gotten so far, truly. Sometimes he forgets.

He straightens up on his recliner. “Come here?”

Felix huffs. “We’re talking. We’re  _ playing.” _

“Later. Come here.”

Felix rolls his eyes but gets up all the same, circling the low table. “I was winning anyway.”

“Mhm,” Dimitri agrees easily - though noncommittally - and as Felix leans a knee on the recliner and moves to straddle him, Dimitri places steadying hands on his hips and slides backwards until he is, well, reclining.

Felix gets straight to the point, bending forwards until he can rest his forearms on Dimitri’s chest and kiss him. Dimitri relaxes with a sigh, melting into the tight space between his warm body and the upholstery, molded after their shapes, contained, held.

Felix drinks in his content sigh, but he is still not close enough, so Dimitri slides his right hand around the small of Felix's back and the left one between his shoulder blades and presses down just to feel that warmth along the length of his own body, the solid, grounding weight.

Felix resists the sudden movement at first, digging sharp elbows into Dimitri's chest, but then allows the insistent pressure and breaks the kiss. Dimitri's throat grows wet with hot breath where Felix mouths at it, and he shivers from something that is definitely not the cold.

Dimitri shifts his left hand down a fraction, then farther when Felix stays put, content to tug Dimitri's collar down and worry at the exposed skin, coaxing blood closer to the surface.

A gasp escapes Dimitri that makes his chest heave and dislodge Felix's mouth from its spot, and Felix bites down in admonishment. Dimitri's hands tighten on Felix’s waist in response and he turns his head to the side, trying to catch his breath when it suddenly evades him.

"Terrible. Stop fidgeting," Felix grumbles into his skin, curls his hands under and over Dimitri's shoulders to bring himself closer. His hips give a measured, deliberate grind into Dimitri’s, and Dimitri presses his hands down in encouragement, coaxing him into the movement.

Felix breaks away with a hiss, his brows scrunched together and glistening mouth open. He is so beautiful like this that Dimitri cannot resist craning his neck forwards to kiss him again.

"Felix," he speaks against him, into him, their lips still moving against each other. He brushes his thumbs against the juts of Felix's hip bones, sharp even with the fabric in between, teases his fingertips under the waistband of Felix’s pants.

Some of the times, he still asks here if he may. When that happens, Felix answers with swearing and rolling his hips down again and leaning forwards to bite at Dimitri’s jaw, his thighs a burning vise around Dimitri’s waist.

Dimitri used to need this - to ask, to make absolutely sure that his touch is welcome, even though this is far from the first, or tenth, or twentieth time.

But Felix assents to his unspoken question without words, impatiently so, and Dimitri’s gloves meet skin, and for a while all thoughts of politics leave his buzzing mind.

*

The letters go out a week later to every town and village, from the northernmost reaches of Gautier down to Enbarr. After a  _ lot _ of calculations and poring over a population census or ten, with the help of his team Dimitri settles on one person selected communally to represent a thousand households. He shuts down the suggestion to have a fixed number of representatives from each territory - the differences in the population density would skew the effectiveness from land to land. This is not about borders - it is about people.

If the census does not lie, this is going to leave them with a bit over five thousand people. He does not want to lower the number by saddling each person with more responsibility - a thousand households are absolutely more than enough to manage - but neither can he have a productive discussion with five thousand people in one room.

Besides, the question of logistics arises. Where would they all stay for the duration of the council? How would they be fed?

Eventually, Dimitri decides to organize preliminary, localized council sessions, and the nominated representatives from those - every tenth or so - would travel to Fhirdiad in time for the yearly winter session alongside the lords. Dimitri would have to provide fliers, of course, for the regions with bad roads or no tradition of flying - otherwise they would spend too much time away from home purely on traveling.

The question of succession arises after that, of course, and after some consideration Dimitri proposes that the representatives keep their positions for two years, which would serve to avoid the rise of an artificial stratum of pseudo-nobility. It  _ does _ put them at an unfair disadvantage against the lords, who rule over their lands until they die or step down. But - well. Dimitri may have budding plans in store for the lords as well, and the time for them to bloom will come soon enough.

And then there are - the territories without a lord. Like Itha, and Arundel, and Hresvelg, and Nuvelle, lands that cannot speak for themselves in the lord council - but if the other council works out, Dimitri will simply have to pay that much more attention to what their representatives will tell him. And with the local councils - while it will not strictly be a case of self-governance, Dimitri has found that the power of the lords is slowly becoming more and more symbolic - and perhaps, soon it will become just as obvious to everyone else.

Dimitri can feel it, a future that is budding and branching and growing stronger. A future where the majority will not feel silenced. A future where one’s blood will not define their fate.

A future that will have no need for kings.

Dimitri already sees the displeasure, the distrust, the panic that he is going to face from the lords once they realize what he is doing - and that it is not a passing fancy of a young and idealistic monarch. But he does not need the visions to know how opposed they are going to be - and the lords are quick to confirm it for him.

“With all due respect,” Lady Yelailah’s lips are pressed into a bloodless line when she is not busy gritting the words through her teeth, “Your Majesty, this is quite an unprecedented notion. Inviting commoners to rule alongside those rightfully placed up here by law and blood - that is unheard of. Worse than that - it’s scandalous!”

On Dimitri’s left, Felix growls under his breath, but Dimitri twitches a hand to quieten him. He can handle this.

“I understand your concern - a time of change is a time of worry,” he responds with a mildness he does not feel. “However, I am sure my ancestor Loog was faced with the same kind of trepidation when he first decided to split Adrestia in two and went to war that resulted in founding Faerghus.”

A murmur around the table, and Dimitri suppresses a thrilled smile. Comparing himself to Loog? Outrageous, of course. 

But Dimitri believes. He  _ believes. _

“Your Majesty, it is not just this idea that worries us,” Lord Bero speaks up. “The notion of commoners sitting by our side to...uh,” he cannot even finish the sentence, which alone speaks volumes of his true sentiments. “But, my lord, the topic of your image has already been brought up quite a number of times. Your inspired work on the unification process, the discussion of Duscur’s sovereignty, the refusal to marry - people don’t know what to expect from you at this point. Forgive my bluntness, but who is to say that next time we won’t hear the news that you do not wish for a Crested heir for Faerghus’s throne?”

Bero’s laugh is strained, there to underline what a ridiculous idea it is, a poor cover up for his concern, and - ah. Here it is - the tension in the room spins into a thread and sings as it is snapped taut. 

They have been talking about this, Dimitri realizes. They have been worried about it for a long time now.

So this is when he explains his secret project from the nights when the puzzles prove to be too unyielding and he turns to reading instead.

Dimitri takes a deep breath, remembering their faces in the last moment before the already unsteady foundation of ancient, obsolete laws crumbles under their feet.

“Well, actually…”

Crests are dying out, Dimitri knows that. Have been dying out for a while, fewer and fewer Bearers born every generation. He knows the numbers and is smart enough to calculate their trajectory - soon enough, there simply will not be enough Bearers to fill all positions of power, as tradition dictates. Some might persist for a bit: Fraldarius still comes up multiple times per generation, as well as Cichol, Charon, and a few others. But some might be over within the next hundred years. Some even sooner.

The Crest of Blaiddyd will die with him.

The world will belong to the Crestless. It already does - and it is foolish to pretend otherwise.

But prejudice is the terrible twin of tradition, and Dimitri needs to pay attention in order to facilitate the change.

And he  _ has _ been - paying attention, that is. Faerghus is not historically known for its inclination to be kind to foreigners, and Adrestia is outright paranoid after the trauma of Faerghus’s bloody separation, of the war with Dagda. But Leicester, while bordering Almyra, is in itself a conglomerate of lands led by a round table, a lot more interwoven than Faerghan duchies and yet a lot more autonomous than Adrestia with its ministries. Definitely more equal in its governance than either of them, Grand Duke or no.

And, as Faerghus’s former province, it is studied well enough to fill a significant part of the palace’s library.

The issue of Crests might have nothing to do with xenophobia - but in the end, both Dimitri’s project and the Leicesteri time-tested way to minimize infighting are about encouraging people to get along.

Dimitri has quite a few ideas. People are incentivized to try until a Crested child is born, and while Dimitri is not about to  _ tax _ people for that - although since it would only impact noble families, maybe it would not be such a bad idea - there is definitely something to be said for benefits for families with Crestless children. Especially those who stop trying for a Crest after the first child is born without it.

Discourage giving up Crestless children.  _ En _ courage their adoption from the orphanages. A system of benefits, perhaps, some extra help sponsored by the Crown when they take up positions traditionally held by the Bearers.

Dimitri’s project is only a sketch, a collection of ideas and vague outlines, but with enough dedication and effort this could be turned into something good - something great. 

Even then, not all of it can be implemented immediately, of course. Dimitri is taking advantage of Fódlan’s uncertain state to turn everything upside down, but this is a change that needs time. A change for which Fódlan needs to get back on its feet first.

With the Crests out of the picture, there will be no need for the Relics either, as they would only harm Crestless wielders anyway. And bones do not feel and cannot be wounded by a change done too soon, and so Dimitri writes another letter, and a bird carries it off to Garreg Mach.

The reply comes a few days later, the small scroll sealed with the archbishop’s personal stamp.

_ To His Majesty Dimitri I, King of the United Kingdom of Fódlan, _

_ salutations for the new year, may your rule be long and fruitful and gazed upon by the Goddess, blessed be Her name and all that. _

_ Now that it’s out of the way - to be frank, when you mentioned asking me for help last year, I envisioned something where I could be more of a practical use. But it seems that the future can be unpredictable, after all. _

_ Regarding your question: I have no need of the Relics; on the opposite, it would be my preference  _ _ not _ _ to turn G.M. into a Relic safe, as it may prove counterproductive to my decentralization plans.  _

_ If I were to keep something this important out of the reach of those who would look for it and out of the way of those who might find it by chance…I would suggest some really strong sealing and concealing magic and some very deep water. _

_ Who would you trust with this? _

_ Take care, Dimitri. _

_ Byleth E., the Archbishop and so on and so forth. _

_ Also: the wyverns with the Relics and the S. Weapons kept in G.M. (Sword of the Creator, Thunderbrand (that one took some convincing - don’t get me started), Caduceus, Ukonvasara, Assal, Ochain, Sword and Shield of Seiros) flew out yesterday, so expect them to arrive about two or three days after receiving this letter. _

The answer to Byleth’s question is quite simple. In the end, only the Margrave puts up a noticeable fight, growling and spitting about the Srengi border, but the two remaining Crest-bearers in the family are Sylvain’s mother, who has forsworn wielding the Lance of Ruin back when she was a child, and Sylvain, who takes one look at Dimitri’s order and tells him to have the damned thing. The rest make a great show of relinquishing the weapons to Dimitri, and the Archbishop’s endorsement certainly does not hurt.

Once all the relics and the Sacred Weapons arrive in Fhirdiad, they are loaded into a nondescript cart, Annette casts a concealing spell over it, and she and Felix leave the city in the middle of the night, heading east.

Dimitri worries, of course. Holds the visions in a tight grasp, images of the cart’s axle breaking down in the wilderness, of bandits taking two lone travelers for an easy target, or guests at inns seeing too much, drawing conclusions that are too dangerous. 

But the axle holds, and the bandits stay away, and the concealing spell is strong. 

Felix and Annette return a week and a half later, cartless. Like the Eye Socket, the Darida Bay of Fraldarius was created by a great meteor striking and splitting the ground, and the cracks run deep, and the water in them is lightless and cold. The old bones are finally laid to rest.

*

“Told you it would be an army,” Felix murmurs, his arms crossed, expression stony as he surveys the people in front of them.

Dimitri only nods mutely in response, not trusting himself to speak. He took a potion given to him by one of the palace mages that is supposed to amplify his voice - because while he knows how to pitch it to carry, this is no rousing battle cry or a parade speech - he needs to be heard clearly and understood precisely. The potion tickles his throat, warming the blood, encouraging him to speak, and Dimitri would really rather not accidentally test if it is working just yet.

Five hundred people, even with an additional couple hundred of interpreters, is not a big number, all things considered, though perhaps Dimitri should invite the Architects Guild to talk about building something specifically for the future meetings - or maybe repurposing a cathedral. The Great Hall is hardly the right place for this.

Dimitri has addressed crowds ten times bigger than this, true - but they were never this mixed. He and Felix are sitting at a table of their own on a dais, a lower step to Dimitri’s right housing another table for the scribes. Per protocol, they should have waited to arrive until everyone was ready, but Dimitri does not mind the small pause - it gives him time to observe the sea of people in front of him, many talking, some already arguing, though nothing seems to escalate too much so far.

Dimitri sees Rowan fishermen and Nuvellean crab catchers, Fraldarian lace makers and Edmundian shipwrights, Hevringë carpenters and Gonerili cork cutters. People from the same areas form clusters, the cuts and colours of their dresses marking the groups, and the sheer number of dialects swirling together teeters on overwhelming.

There are people from Blaiddyd too, of course, from Fhirdiad - a man seems familiar until Dimitri suddenly places him: a few weeks prior he came bearing a petition with a thousand signatures and a passionate speech about keeping, or preferably even increasing the number of communal kitchens despite the worst months being over. No wonder he was chosen to represent now, too. 

It is the end of the Garland Moon, and people will be missing the Solstice celebrations back home, for which Dimitri thinks he should probably apologize. But it is amusing, too, to watch the southerners react to the northern summer. Faerghans know how fleeting the heat can be, and so the summer fashion tends to be on the revealing side, winter-pale skin soaking up the sun while it graces the cold earth. But Adrestians - and even some people from Leicester - are obviously used to warmer temperatures and now huddle together, bewildered, when their light jackets and loose pants do not save them like they are supposed to. 

Dimitri is not about to light the fires - that would be ridiculous, it is  _ summer, _ he is close to overheating in his high collar - but he does order to bring out cloaks for those who need them, and some of the Faerghan representatives good-naturedly offer their own scarce outer layers to the shivering southerners, language barriers be damned.

“Your Majesty,” a herald steps up to Dimitri, bows. “Everyone is present, if you would like to begin.”

At Dimitri’s nod, the herald steps forward, and the palace mage whispers an incantation for a short-term amplifying spell, touching their fingers to the man’s throat.

“Attention!” his voice booms; a startled wave passes over the crowd as everyone turns towards the dais, towards Dimitri. “Please take your seats. His Majesty the King will now speak.”

A murmur of translations, a brief bustle and the chorus of wood scraping stone and fabric whispering, and soon, everybody is seated.

A hush descends over the hall.

Dimitri gets up from his chair, takes a minute to sweep his gaze across the room, viscerally aware of every pair of eyes trained on him, locking him in place. It has happened before - it will happen again - he should be used to it by now.

And he  _ is. _ This time just feels...different.

The people looking at Dimitri are - wary, cautious, waiting for the other shoe to drop. They love him - not all of them, of course, especially not the Adrestians, though obviously those chosen to represent have to at least tolerate him - but overall, people do love him, and Dimitri is slowly starting to believe it, as wild as the thought tastes. But they still do not know what to expect of this, of this hitch and break and change in the protocol. Not used to being asked what they want instead of having to scream it bloodily to have any hope to be heard.

But it is going to change.

And the change is right here, a tide, a push, a step onto an untrodden path.

Dimitri swallows, and opens his mouth, and begins to speak. 


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs:  
> \- panic attack  
> \- violent visions

_ beyond the edge, a darkness prowls _

_ winter is close like never before  _

_ and your shadow, embracing mine, is on the road again _

There is a new war coming.

Dimitri sees it stirring sluggishly in the shadows, in unnatural angles of his knights’ necks, in a faint, faraway chorus of many people crying for food, for protection, for peace. He stands for hours on his balcony every night, watching Fhirdiad burn, watching the buildings topple into ash, crushing people underneath their trembling weight. Snatches of shouted Srengi ring in his ears.

Dimitri looks and looks and looks, sorts through every vision that comes to him, follows every branching path, but so many of them, sooner or later, end in a war. A scorching hot spring, a drought, forest fires; Southern Sreng, bayed into submission by its northern sibling; Gautier, trampled flat under the hooves of the Army of A Hundred Lords; Fraldarius, caught and cornered and bled dry from a thousand cuts. A freshly sewn together country tearing at the seams, devouring itself. Refugees crying in the streets. Disease. Eventually, plague.

The harsh, punishing response of the Kingdom; Srengi civilians crucified on the Great Plains by foot soldiers hungry for revenge, their officers looking pointedly away. The endless grasslands burned black and salted. A clan leader’s head on a pike, his wife’s, his unborn child’s.

Dimitri shudders a breath, rubs his tongue against the roof of his mouth to dislodge and swallow the bile. It reminds him, too eerily, of a war they have only narrowly avoided losing. The country is still barely managing, still mending - still mourning, too. It cannot go into battle again.  _ He  _ cannot go into battle again, not so soon.

But everywhere he looks, the world goes up in flames. Something more peaceful roams the snow-capped horizon, but it is so small and so far away, and Dimitri does not know the path to it. But there has to be one. Has to be.

So Dimitri spends every moment he can spare searching for it, rummaging deep inside his mind. His everyday duties of running a country still demand his attention, so he picks up his old, worrying patterns again but does not notice until after the habit sets in. But this is not like last time, this is not the cotton fog of apathy - it is simply that if he spends less time eating, sleeping, training, doing his silly puzzles - it will grant him a few extra hours or even minutes to  _ think _ .

But Dimitri does not see it. He just doesn’t.

A war is coming, and its maw is wide open.

A war is coming, and he is, once again, powerless, clueless, unfit to lead his people.

Dimitri is in his private study when it all crests and comes thundering down on him. He is feeling progressively hotter even in the chill autumn air, divesting himself of the heavy cloak and overcoat. He has been trying to focus on his work, but Father is weeping behind his shoulder, pressing charred hands to his sunken eyelids. He knows what burning feels like, knows better than Dimitri does - for now.

Dimitri has not seen ghosts in a while. He was doing so much better…

Dimitri stumbles upright from his chair, not knowing where he is going - but it does not matter as he barely makes it around the desk before he sinks heavily to his knees, the weight of approaching doom bending his spine into an arch. He gasps in a breath, feels his ribs strain against the pressure. His eyes are  _ burning, _ burning angrier and more violently than the rest of his body, and he tries to will it away, to keep fate as far from him as possible until it finishes its inevitable approach, but the burning does not cease, and Dimitri realizes he is crying. He curls further in on himself, feels his forehead touch the coarse carpet. Feels the tip of a ghostly blade pressing into his skin there, his crown flicked off and into the yellow dust, a useless lump of metal that it is.

Choices will be made for him if he waits too long. He knows that, has the lesson of it scrawled in scars all over his body, in memories that tear him awake at night. But there are no choices to make. There is nothing he can do.

Dimitri is shaking so hard that he does not notice the door open, does not notice the intruder until they step closer, each footfall echoing through the floor and against his forehead, by increments driving the curved blade deeper into his skull.

“Dimitri.” A cautious voice, just barely loud enough to momentarily distract him from the feeling of metal pinching and cooling his blood. A dear voice. Felix.

Dimitri lets out a thin whine, incapable of speech. What a sight he must be - in the past, Felix would have surely hated him for this.

“Dimitri,” Felix repeats, and crouches down next to him, and puts hands under his armpits as if to pull him upright, but Dimitri is pinned to the ground, can Felix not see it? Can he not see the monstrosity that has made trampling ground on his back?

“Listen…” Felix begins and immediately pauses, his voice unsure. One of his hands moves to the spot between Dimitri’s shoulder blades, rubs it absently through the woolen tunic. “It’s - you are going to be alright. Whatever is happening to you, you’ve been there, and you got better. You got through it.”

Felix keeps talking and is so painfully awkward at it, so obviously unskilled. But instead of scoffing and yelling and accusing as he would have done in their aching, sutured past, he is sitting close enough to share body heat, and offers a calming touch, and spouts nonsense even though he has always made a point that every word leaving his mouth has a deliberation and a weight to it.

If Dimitri had any ability to smile right now, he would. Felix distracts him so easily - he is already thinking of him instead of the hulking beast of invasion.

Felix talks, and Dimitri does his best to lose himself in the sound of his voice rather than the phantom sizzling of skin, and eventually the fires are - not extinguished, but subdued. Beaten back, for just a moment of respite.

Dimitri sits up and immediately has to lean against Felix when his sore spine fails to support his weight. Felix returns the pressure, shifts his hips until he’s sitting sideways, for better leverage.

“What’s wrong?” he asks,  _ tsking _ in warning when Dimitri moves to shake his head. “None of this. Tell me.”

Something in Dimitri lurches at the firmness of Felix’s voice, almost freefalling into the brief pause. Is this the moment?

Is this when he - finally - tells Felix?

He is full of worry, and confusion, and the bone-splintering weight of everything that he is used to carrying alone.  _ Has _ carried alone his entire life, shying away from people, scared of infecting them with his disease, of dragging them down to hell with him, of having their voices added to the ones already abusing him…

Just a short while ago, the very notion of telling Felix would be as unthinkable as it has been their whole lives. For as much as Dimitri embraces wounding blows, Felix’s have always hurt the most, have always struck the deepest, tearing into the most vulnerable parts of him. Felix damages the same way he speaks: directly, viscerally, to the point. Lets Dimitri know the exact reasons he is being cut open, signals that his sins are seen and judged and deemed fit for merciless punishment.

But now he sits on the worn carpet, leaning his full weight against Dimitri in order to keep him upright even though it must be cramping him up, and his hand is still moving in small unconscious circles on Dimitri’s back. Lately, there has been a faint underlying softness to his voice even when his words are stern, a look of concern under pinched eyebrows when Dimitri is falling deeper into bad habits. At night, Felix lies close enough to trade breaths, open and honest, and reaches for him with a need to touch that has nothing to do with being within slashing range.

Dimitri thinks back through time, following the thread that brought them here, gently pushing away everything that did not happen, or happened differently. Their gleeful childhood, their shattered adolescence, their - wounds, and wounds upon wounds, blades cutting the same patterns over and over with the ferocity of two animals locked in a cage that would be too small even for one of them.

Breaking those patterns.

Maybe now he can finally break this one too.

Dimitri swallows, opens his mouth to speak, closes it again. How does he even put any of this into words? How can he ever begin to explain?

Felix’s hand slows down, stills, but remains a grounding weight on Dimitri’s back. Out of the corner of his eye, Dimitri sees him watching, waiting for him to speak, patient where previously he would grow frustrated and goad and prod until he drew blood - or give up and stalk away.

If Felix is trying, so can he.

“I…see the threads of time,” Dimitri confesses and immediately winces. It sounds like a joke. Like a line from a poorly written play.

A pause. “Like…the future? Like a prophet?” Felix ventures, and Dimitri can  _ hear _ the frown in his voice.

_ Is _ he a prophet? Is that what this is? It does not feel like an encompassing enough term. It does not feel like a good explanation at all. He is already failing.

Father is standing off to a side, his lips moving silently, and Dimitri  _ should not _ be able to see him with his blind eye. Should - should not be able to see him at all. 

Dimitri shakes his head, moves his gaze away from Father until he winks out of existence. Looks down at the woven patterns in front of him. “Not exactly…”

Slowly, very slowly, he begins to explain his curse to Felix. Does not know how to keep it cohesive, chases his scattering thoughts like an untrained hound after a panicked flock of quails. Repeats himself. His words shimmer and blur even as they are spoken, changing their shapes, their bursts distorting and breaking the one-sided conversation into tiny pieces. He forgets which parts he has already said and which are simply what he  _ could  _ have said. It is disorienting. His head is starting to hurt, like he has been staring at a glimmering surface of water in direct sunlight.

Felix listens intently, never interrupting; Dimitri anxiously notes a whirl of emotions passing through his expressive face, even though he must be trying to suppress them, out of habit if nothing else. A twitch of an eyebrow, a brief scowl, a contemplative squint. But not a word, not a snort, not a gesture.

Dimitri stumbles across the body of Edelgard, heaves a sob, tells Felix how -  _ afraid _ he was, how powerless he felt, how he saw all these outcomes and tried relentlessly to prevent them, how he hoped - and how he failed. Hastily wipes away a tear before it can fall, even though Felix has seen all of him by now. Knows all of him by now, not a single secret left uncauterized. Well -  _ one  _ last secret still remains, but that is for Dimitri's foolish heart to live with. 

Eventually, Dimitri falls silent. Speaking of the visions brings them too close to the surface, fills his mouth and nose with the nauseating stench of iron. Dimitri breathes forcefully through his mouth, focusing on the feeling of air brushing against his dry tongue.

Felix gets up abruptly, and Dimitri’s heart stops as he regains his balance - sometimes this is where Felix walks away, and the door closes, and Dimitri remains trapped with his ghosts - but no, he stands only to stretch and shake out his arms, light on the balls of his feet, his lean, coiled body already looking for a tangible enemy.

_ 'How much have you…' - 'Do you know about…' - 'Did you see it when I…'  _

“Tell me again. Do you know what people are going to say? Or do?”

Felix’s voice is cautious. Careful. Assertive.

“I told you, it’s - not as simple,” Dimitri sighs. “I see too much. Hear too much. It often - remains unclear until the last moment.”

“Hm.” Felix taps his foot. “And you knew there would be a war. With Edelgard.”

Dimitri nods, leaves his head down. It is still hard to speak about her. “Again - yes. That one is fixed, it - it always happens.”

The tapping stops. “Why have you never said anything?”

Wouldn’t  _ that _ be funny. 

“I couldn’t. I tried to prevent it on my own, but I - well. You know how it all went. It was fixed, too - I had to fight her.”

“Of course you tried,” Felix huffs drily and pauses. “Wait - you had to - is that why you were at Gronder? Why you…”

The memory rises through the black haze of madness. The soil of the command hill slipping under his feet, an inhuman, furious, terrified scream wrenched out of a throat that is not his own as he falls under the weight of the spears rendering his soul from his body.

Dimitri nods. His body feels too heavy to do anything else.

“And the dead people you see - they…” Felix cuts himself off abruptly, and his face turns sour the way it never had to when they were children, before Felix taught himself not to crumble.

Dimitri has not seen Glenn in a while. Is not completely sure he will not find him there if he turns his head. Is not completely sure what Felix is looking for.

What  _ are _ they, in the end? Flares of other realities? Products of his hurting mind? Ghosts? Something else entirely? A mix of everything?

“I don’t know,” Dimitri apologizes. “I don’t have an answer for you.”

“It’s fine,” Felix drops, and there is a note in his voice that makes Dimitri think that maybe Felix did not really want to know anyway.

They stay still for a minute, half-buried in phantoms.

But there is something Dimitri must say.

“Felix,” he begins, “I have expressed it already, but I need to make sure you understand.” He raises his head and waits until Felix looks at him, his face unreadable. “I hear sometimes the things people  _ could _ say, but they are almost immediately overwritten by what they  _ do _ say, so it does not matter in the end. I am always - too close to really see anything. Like those paintings made up of multicoloured spots, only I cannot step back to see the whole picture. Not until it becomes too late.”

Felix, who is fiercely private, who guards his heart so closely and yet gives it away so completely when it truly matters - of course he would see it as a violation. He must know that there is no malice in Dimitri’s intentions.

He still does not know if Felix even believes him. He has yet to express an opinion either way.

He is looking to the side, his hands on his hips, the muscle in his jaw working. Maybe he has not even heard anything Dimitri has just said. Maybe he is not here at all, too deep in his own thoughts, retreating to places where he cannot be followed.

“Felix?” Dimitri tries.

“We need to find a way to manage your ability,” Felix decides. His tone is curt, calculating.

There is a small hitch in Dimitri’s breath. Of course Felix would immediately think of how to utilize it, how to rein it in, how to make it  _ count.  _ Dimitri would never expect him to think of something other but a plan of action - it is what he himself has been fruitlessly trying to do all these years.

Moreover, though… 

"You - believe me? You do not think I am…"

Dimitri's lips part around words without actually moving, shadows of the times he is not too cowardly to hand Felix the knife. 

_ 'Lying' - 'misguided' - 'mad'  _

Felix taps his foot impatiently again, crosses his arms. 

"Your account of the war with Edelgard is accurate - by which I mean the parts that you weren’t present for," Felix fixes him with a stare, the focus of it like a blade flicking out. "As well as the parts that Claude shared with me from intelligence reports and consequently disregarded when they ended up irrelevant. Even so…" Felix looks away again for a moment, a feint, a dismissive swing of the sword. "I've learned by now that there isn't a single bone in your body truly capable of deceit. You say nothing you don't believe in."

It could sound like an accusation, but Dimitri's shoulders slump with such sharp relief that he feels dizzy. Felix has passed judgement on him, but no blow comes. No punishment. 

"However - the way it affects you…I don’t want to see you like this _ever_ again. It…" - _'made me angry'_ _\- 'made me sick' - 'scared me, scared me, scared me' -_ "...was difficult to watch. Reminded me of…” Felix pauses and his eyes widen. “Wait. Is this - is this what was happening to you when - every time you...?” He waits for Dimitri’s dejected nod and clenches his fists, his frame going taut. “Fuck. _Fuck._ ”

Dimitri can only watch, stupefied, as Felix lowers himself back to the floor in front of him, folding his legs beneath him in a squeak of leather. His narrowed eyes dart around rapidly, never catching on anything - probably not seeing the room at all. He will not look at Dimitri, and his heart clenches. He wants so ardently to reach out but does not quite dare.

“Felix...?” he tries instead. 

“Dimitri…” Felix whispers, clears his throat, tries again - louder. His voice is a crouching panther, low and dangerous. “How long exactly has this been going on?”

A rusty blade of grief shifts in Dimitri’s chest. “Duscur.”

Felix looks at him, finally. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, holds it, lets it out through grit teeth. The pause stretches.

Dimitri fights the urge to fidget under Felix’s unblinking gaze, to look away, to let out any sound at all just to bridge the gap. He is unable to sift through his visions and know what is coming. It is too much, there is only the white noise of it. He cannot  _ think.  _

Slowly, Felix lifts his hands and gently cups Dimitri’s face. After a moment of hesitation, Dimitri lowers his chin a fraction to lean into it, allows himself the comfort of Felix’s touch.

Felix strokes Dimitri’s cheeks with his thumbs, once, twice. Presses them in slightly, a mere suggestion of a grip, an invitation to focus on him - as if Dimitri would ever choose to look at anything else.

“I am sorry,” he says. His hands shake minutely, and he tenses and shifts them, never squeezing Dimitri’s face, never demanding control. “I am so sorry, Dimitri. I never knew - I never thought to ask.”

Dimitri gives him a rueful smile, nudges a hand with his cheekbone. “I probably would not have told you anyway.”

Felix winces, though not at Dimitri’s words. “And that’d be because I had you convinced I didn’t care.” He lowers his head for a moment and sighs again, lifts it back up to retie the threads of their gazes. “I do - I  _ do _ care. I always did. I’m sorry I was so bad at it.”

Dimitri shakes his head slightly, bumping into Felix's calloused hands, counting the fleeting points of contact. That wound is over a decade old. It will take time to heal, it will leave an ugly scar.

But after half a lifetime of festering, dogged anger he is surprised and elated to find that forgiveness can still come easily to him.

In an act of bravery, in lieu of an answer and as an answer itself, he leans forward to place a kiss on Felix's lips with the gentleness of someone more careful, more nimble than him pressing a dried flower into a hand. 

A soft inhalation of surprise, a moment suspended in amber, and then Felix is kissing him back, and his fingers slide into Dimitri's hair and finally tighten, and yes.  _ Yes.  _

*

"So what happened?" Felix asks later, when they are resting, awash in the fading light of draped windows, and Dimitri's ghosts are sweetly drained into silence. 

"Hm?" Dimitri replies while his brain is catching up with the question. The fabric of the canopy above his head, usually a canvas for the visions, is blissfully blank. 

Felix has moved away earlier, grumbling about sweat, and now he rolls onto his stomach to prop himself up on his elbows. The molten haze is already gone from his eyes, leaving them bright and alert. "When I found you - did you see something bad coming?" 

Dimitri breathes out a bitter laugh. "There is always something bad coming.  _ Ow." _ He looks over at Felix, at his disgruntled face. "Did you just pinch me?" 

"Yes, and there is more of  _ this _ bad coming if you don't stop being a smart-ass."

"You should know by now that I am no longer the man who could not pinch back," Dimitri points out with a gloved hand and immediately receives another pinch for his trouble. 

“Stop it. Tell me,” Felix fixes him with his no-nonsense stare. “What do you fear?”

Dimitri sighs, looking back up at the canopy. Felix’s voice is magic, compelling him to speak; Dimitri could never withstand its call. Never really wanted to.

“Failure,” he replies. A decomposing carcass of the continent sprawls before his eyes. “The destruction that comes with it.”

“Why do you think you will fail?”

Dimitri frowns. “Because I - because this is how it always happens. No matter how hard I try to steer, my decisions - they amount to nothing. At best. Often, they bring about a worse outcome.”

Anywhere from a massacred rebellion to a friend presumed dead.

Felix huffs out a laugh. “‘A worse outcome’? Is that how you feel about a united country?” His tone drops lower. “How you feel about -  _ this?” _

Dimitri freezes in alarm, sudden and chilling, an apology and an explanation ready to jump from his tongue like a startled bird, when he realizes Felix is teasing him.

“Felix,” he says in soft reproach, turning his head to look at him.

A quick sun flare of a smile in response, and Felix turns serious again.

“If there is a threat, _tell_ us what you see, so we can prepare and defend ourselves. Let us help, let us find a solution together. You can’t run a country alone, and you _are_ _not_ _alone,_ get this through your thick head.”

Felix’s words are too much, his gaze is too much - everything is too much, and Dimitri looks away again.

“I - I do not know where to begin,” he confesses.

Felix hums, considering. “What bothers you right now? What was the last straw?”

Fire, curdled blood, faces turning to him for a solution he does not have.

“I - uh…I think there is a war with Sreng coming.”

He starts telling Felix about his visions. A few sentences in, Felix holds up a hand, orders Dimitri to get dressed, and sends a guard to fetch a scribe and meet them in the bigger study. Changes his mind and sends for three scribes instead.

The five of them sit down in the spacious room, and Dimitri begins to talk, haltingly at first, but then the long-held dam breaks and it’s all the scribes can do in order to keep up with his disjointed, shaky speech. He understands now why Felix asked for three: with how fast and how turbulent the flow of his words is, only one would never produce an accurate account.

Dimitri talks through the night. The scribes are replaced with fresh ones, told in no uncertain terms that nothing is to leave their mouths. Their King heaves and raves and sobs, jumps from one thought to another and back again without any semblance of order, with barely any lucidity, talks about a foreign invasion, a civil war, and the last thing anyone needs is a murmur to spread like an infection.

Dedue quietly enters the study every few hours to personally bring Dimitri food and what looks like sweet water infused with salted herbs, takes away the old untouched trays but looms disapprovingly over Dimitri until he at least empties the cup. He has yet to ask any questions or express any surprise at all, and Dimitri is shamefully grateful, for he cannot even bear the thought of having this conversation with him right now. 

Dimitri feels like he is unraveling, like his thoughts are spiraling out of control, the possible futures webbing out and tangling and losing any hint of sense or logic. He cannot suppress his shivering then, and shame, and the thought of how tempting it would be to hide in the protective fire of wrath or in the shadow of despair, to lose himself completely again and not have to worry about any of this. 

But Felix is there with him, his steady gaze a grounding, unwavering force on Dimitri’s tortured mind, and he finds himself letting go and just flowing along, allowing the words to tumble out of his mouth as fast as his thoughts can push them out, before he can judge himself for them.

He collapses by the end of the third day, not emptied out by any means, but ground down to his bone marrow, translucent and frayed. The visions leave a bloody trail as the words in their shape tear themselves from his dry mouth, from his hoarse throat, until he cannot utter another sound.

Felix, who has taken a fleeting nap earlier, has been watching Dimitri’s teetering state over the last few hours, so he is there to ease him out of the chair and guide him back to the private chambers, dismissing the sixth - or seventh? eighth? - shift of scribes for the night as they leave the study. Dimitri follows him meekly, stumbling almost every step of the short way, half-blind and reeling.

His mind clouded by the imprints of everything that has passed his lips so far, everything that has yet to pass, Dimitri does not notice or remember arriving in his bedchamber and being undressed and helped into bed. But it must have happened, for when he comes to he is lying in the darkness, the molding pressure of a blanket settling over his supine form, and then Felix is shucking his clothes haphazardly and climbing into bed after him. Felix is not a cuddler, never cared for physical contact the way Dimitri does, but now he shuffles closer and grows still only when his nose and lips are pressed into Dimitri’s bare shoulder. He falls into the abyss of dreamless sleep with Felix’s breath tickling his skin.

Dimitri sleeps for eighteen hours. When he wakes up, his throat is so sore and swollen and stiff he can barely breathe, let alone talk. A healer attends to him, and after breakfast - or supper? It is evening again, after all - Dimitri is already impatient to continue. Felix and Dedue watch over him in shifts when they are not dealing with his daily duties. They force him to take breaks every time his voice threatens to disappear again, and though Dimitri complies, he is eager to go on. 

Eventually, he drifts from Sreng to Enbarr, to Duscur, to Gronder and Merceus and Derdriu. He is intrigued to discover that the more he talks, the slower is the spinning of the blinding kaleidoscope in his head, as if the words weigh it down and hinder its movement. He has not seen Glenn or Father or Stepmother or Uncle in days. He dreams of nothing every night.

Every time Felix is in the room with him, unless he is ordering him to eat or switching out the scribes, he leafs through the already filled pages in a dozen different handwritings, frowning thoughtfully and making notes - on a separate sheet or on the pages themselves. The stack on the desk beside him grows and threatens to tip over before he sends for leather-bound folders.

A full week later, the stream finally dries up, and Dimitri finds himself slumping in his chair. The strange emptiness inside of him leaves him boneless, spent in a way he has never felt before. He feels…lighter? Calmer? He has forgotten the innocent sensation of it. The hollow space rings in him, something that up until now was a permanent home to the crawling, ominous tendrils.

A flock of birds is mingling with the clouds on the horizon, and Dimitri follows the dance with his eye, and his head is so blessedly silent.

Felix collects all the papers and disappears to his own quarters, leaving Dedue to tend to Dimitri. Dedue is so disarmingly quiet and patient with him that Dimitri cannot put this off any longer before the guilt steeps him like a bitter tea.

“You have...questions, I am sure,” he begins when Dedue brews him yet another cup of herbs. “I am sorry for making you wait for so long.”

“There is no need for apologies, Dimitri,” Dedue offers him the cup on a tray and straightens up again after Dimitri takes it. “I could infer enough from my own observations to reach a conclusion.”

Dimitri’s mouth twists. If he had any energy at all, he would probably cry from how much he cherishes Dedue.

“Still… I understand if there is something you wish to ask me,” he offers, and he knows he is pushing the issue somewhat, but sooner or later, the questions will come. Someone will want to know their future. Felix has said nothing so far, and neither has Dedue, but - who else knows already? Who will ask Dimitri to tell them their fate?

And there is no one who deserves to know it more than Dedue. This is the very least Dimitri can do for him. 

There is a pause, but Dimitri hears nothing unspoken, and Dedue’s outline remains singular and still. 

“I have realized by now that there is no definitive way a future will unfold,” Dedue says eventually, his voice even -  _ too _ even. Dimitri sits up. “And I do not wish to cause you undue stress,” he pauses again and hums to clear his throat. “But if there  _ are _ bigger or smaller chances of something happening…and if you would truly not mind me asking…what does the future of Duscur look like?”

Dimitri gives him a small smile. He does not need visions to know Dedue would never ask for anything out of selfishness.

His mind is quiet, so quiet, but Dimitri reaches deeper, pulls the visions up like slow winter fish. They swim sluggishly before him but remain separate, unaffecting.

It is a big question. But, miraculously, such a breathlessly easy one to answer.

“You have got it set on a good path,” Dimitri says, and hopes that Dedue hears the promise of it, not the praise. “As long as Sreng - as long as we find a solution to Sreng, Duscur is going to be alright.”

Dedue considers his answer in silence and then bows, slower and deeper than he has in years.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” he murmurs, and Dimitri’s heart thuds at the vast, rippling emotion in his voice.

*

Dimitri does not see Felix in the next several days and nights: he does not even emerge for the meetings he would normally attend, although the petitioners and heads of guilds have been whipped by his sharp tongue often enough by now that they stay on their best behaviour even in his absence.

Sylvain arrives from the north on the same day Felix finally rejoins society. He and Dimitri barely have time to exchange formal greetings in court and catch up in private before Felix materializes with Ingrid in tow.

“We’re going to have a meeting tomorrow. Just us,” he says, his gaze pinning each one of them in turn.

“Whoa, hello to you too! Where’s my hug? I demand a hug after dropping everything to ride to Fhirdiad on such short notice,” Sylvain complains, already opening his arms.

Felix grimaces at him, not deigning him with a verbal response. “I want to talk to you two before that, though,” he says, addressing Sylvain and Ingrid. “You’ll need some context so we don’t waste time on you freaking out tomorrow.”

Dimitri chews on his lip, remembers himself and grits his teeth to stop it. Felix shoots him a quick inquisitive look. It is…worrisome, to pull them both into this - after so many years of silence and isolation, Dimitri is still reeling from even telling Felix and Dedue about it, but if he cannot trust his oldest friends with this, who  _ can _ he trust?

_ ‘You are not alone.’ _ Dimitri nods, giving Felix his blessing.

Ingrid and Sylvain exchange a bewildered look. 

“Well, you can’t just drop something like that on us and not explain right away,” Ingrid chides Felix. “But first, I’m starving. I’m sure Sylvain is, too.”

*

The next evening finds them gathered around a circular table that is covered with stacks and stacks of folders and loose sheets of paper. Dimitri recognizes them immediately, without even having to peer at the tight writing. It definitely does not look like all that has been written down - Felix is probably holding on to the rest of it. 

“So… ‘The Prophet King’, huh? Has a nice ring to it,” Sylvain drawls, putting his hands behind his head and leaning back.

“Sylvain,” Ingrid hisses; there is an unmistakable sound of a steel-toed boot ramming a leather-covered shin. Sylvain yelps and slams the front legs of his chair back down before he tips over.

“What? It  _ is _ a tiny bit strange, no?” he grins. “I can’t be the only one thinking it.”

“And  _ I’m _ sure Dimitri had a good reason to keep it to himself up until now,” Ingrid counters.

“Hey, I’m not arguing? It all worked out in the end, after all.”

“We can chat about this later,” Felix cuts in before they really get to quarreling. “Right now, there is a war to discuss.” He turns to look at Dimitri and gestures at the papers. “I’ve filled them in on what these contain and how they came to be. We can dive right in.”

“Thank you, Felix,” Dimitri responds. Felix holds his gaze for a moment too long before nodding and turning back to the table.

“Right, the war with Sreng, that’s apparently going to happen. How much time do we have?" Sylvain asks. Candlelight weaves shimmering patterns into his hair. His voice is so convincingly casual now, like discussing someone’s half-coherent visions is the most natural thing in the world.

"Um," Dimitri pauses to think. "Usually - about seven moons, because it is tied to their centennial national festival. Unless the child is born a boy; it is not, most of the times, but when it is, the uncle goes back on his word and raises his people to unseat his kin - then we have about a year - but sometimes there is an assassination instead, and uh - we get blamed and…"

Dimitri cuts off his rant, choking on a familiar wave of anxiety. How,  _ how  _ is he going to deal with this? He does not even know where to begin. 

Felix reaches over him, pulls a stack of papers towards himself. After leafing through it, he sorts out several dozens of pages and places them in the middle of the table. "This is the festival branch. Whatever we can find on timing is contained here."

They divide the pages among themselves and get to reading. The sheets are numbered and labeled, Dimitri notices, covered with arrows and comments in Felix’s spidery scrawl. It is so very odd to see the chaos of his mind, the rantings and the ghosts, unspooled so thoroughly, written out so neatly and orderly, like there is nothing wrong with them at all. Like he is not an abomination.

Ingrid lets out a small cut-off noise. Whatever she is reading makes her blanch. "Oh, it's…" She considers the papers, her fingers holding the pages in a firm, decisive grip, like one would treat a venomous snake. "It's the chances of - dying."

A familiar shadow looms over them all. 

Sylvain swallows, holds out a hand. Splays his fingers and nods, encouragingly, when Ingrid hesitates to pass him the papers. 

Felix returns to his own reading, but Dimitri abandons all pretense and watches Sylvain from across the table. He remembers those parts,  _ the Stand of the Margraviate of Gautier, _ it will later be called - though now he remembers them as recollections rather than intrusive visions. They do not spell a promising outcome. Nothing does, not after the war spills into Fódlan over the mountains.

After a minute, Sylvain places the papers on the table and leans back in his chair; Dimitri feels a nudge against his foot when Sylvain sprawls out, claiming territory, seeking control. 

"Well, that's simple, then. I’ll wear a helmet, problem solved." Sylvain pauses and swivels a look at the rest of them. "What? I know,  _ I know _ , it's a  _ crime, _ but between the death of my image and actual, physical death… a difficult choice, but I lean towards the former."

It is not that simple, not by far, and Dimitri knows that Sylvain did not fail to calculate his chances. The helmet alone will not fix everything. 

Sylvain holds his gaze steadily, as if daring him to point it out, but Dimitri only nods, conceding. Sylvain is no fool. 

Sylvain points at Ingrid. "You’re going to wear one too. And a better neck guard."

"What? Am I coming with you?" Ingrid turns to look at Dimitri. "Am I coming with him?" 

Dimitri freezes. In the times when things go badly, their chances are usually better if they are there to watch over each other. 

But what if it goes badly in some other way that he does not see? What is he unaware of? He is treading a waist-high sea of grass, and a serpent lies in wait. Where? 

What if he says the wrong thing and loses them both? What if he says  _ nothing _ and loses them anyway? 

The walls are leaning in, waiting for his answer. Dimitri's dry throat closes. 

"Yes," Felix reaches for a folder and checks something in it. "It looks like you’ll be safest if you don't engage during the uh - yes, the big snowstorm in the mountain pass. Other than that - you should be fine." 

Dimitri breathes again, endlessly grateful to Felix for relieving him of the duty to speak, endlessly anxious over his verdict. The lack of certainty terrifies him. He should do better, know better. He should  _ be  _ better. What good is his ‘ability’ if he cannot use it to  _ save?  _ How does that make it anything more than a curse?

"Dimitri? You still with us?" 

Dimitri resurfaces to the careful, watchful tilt of Sylvain's head. Felix squeezes his forearm and relaxes his hand again, leaving it briefly in the crook of Dimitri's elbow. 

"Yes, I - got lost in thought. Forgive me." He frowns. “It does not get easier, does it.”

Nobody laughs, but Dimitri is not sure he was aiming to joke.

"Dimitri…" Ingrid looks down at her hands, calloused from constantly holding the reins, then back at him. "We are soldiers. There is always a risk, with or without a prophecy to guide us."

Dimitri nods, not trusting himself to speak again so soon. She means it in consolation, surely, but he is so, so tired of feeling helpless. 

“Let’s keep reading,” Felix cuts the air, slicing through the pause with it. “We have a war to win.”

*

“How are your…” Felix speaks suddenly and pauses, wiggles his fingers. “How is your head.”

Dimitri stills his fingers where he is running them through the soil, weeding the patch of spearmint.

As the year rolls to winter again and the nights grow longer, soon he will have to stop coming to Mother’s garden. And once spring arrives...it will surely be the last thing on his mind. So he focuses on the timid petals of monkshood and the fluffy camomile and the deceptively soft-thorned dragonbane while he can.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

He is not - he is not losing it. Not currently. Not since the time Felix found him in his study, anxious and in tears. He has been doing a lot better in comparison, actually, a ringing kind of clarity granted to him for once in the face of looming catastrophe.

They are making no progress. Sylvain and Ingrid have all but moved into the palace - even traveling from their families’ quarters in Fhirdiad feels like a pointless waste of time. Most of Dimitri’s duties have been relegated to his team, but they tell nobody of the reason for it. Instead, they get together every afternoon in the bigger study, around the same circular table, and read, and talk, and push pins into the big Srengi map on the wall, and try to find a way.

So far, there is nothing. The war comes knocking - they fight - they lose.

And Dimitri  _ knows _ that this is how it is going to be - part of him has already accepted it, whether he wants to or not. But his friends’ stubbornness, their pointed determination bordering on desperation - they infect him in turn.

Because they are afraid - he knows that as well. Not cowardly, no, but the price they paid for the previous war was high and there is not enough left to pay for another.

And Dimitri is afraid for them, too. For his friends, for his people - he is afraid. He would do anything to win this, but no matter what they try - to defend, to fall back, to strike first - nothing ends well.

“You seem calmer,” Felix points out. “Not so many nightmares.”

Dimitri looks inwards for a moment, glances over the row of days before they fade into oblivion. Felix is right - the blissful silence persists, after the initial surge of hysteria. Not completely: the undercurrents are already growing louder. But they are still nothing compared to the roaring torrents that are usually in their place, making Dimitri doubt if there is a difference between them and reality.

“Maybe it’s because of the talking?” Felix proposes when Dimitri does not say anything. “Getting it out. I don’t know.” He looks away, irritated.

Huh. Maybe that is part of the reason for the crystalline clarity, even if all use it has is heralding their shared doom.

“No - I think you might be right.” Dimitri says.

Felix stares at the side of his head before looking away again. He would be pacing now, Dimitri sees, has he not forbidden him from trampling the overgrown herbs. “Maybe you should keep talking, then.”

Dimitri looks up at him from his crouch, confused. “But I have already said everything I know of the war…”

“Then just talk about whatever you see, relevant or not.” Felix moves to make a step - a silhouette or three begin to pace, after all - but remembers himself in time. “Get it out before it. Builds up. Or something. You weren’t only talking about the war, anyway.”

Something in Felix’s tone makes Dimitri look closer, but he has already turned away, fingers drumming against his elbow where he has his arms crossed over his chest.

He is strange like this sometimes, lately. Either avoiding eye contact more than he usually does or watching Dimitri in this careful, evaluating manner of his, like he is testing a weapon he has not wielded before. Weirdly affectionate - by Felix’s standards, anyway - one moment, where he sticks close and almost  _ frets _ over Dimitri, and just as weirdly aloof the next, which is disorienting to Dimitri, true, but also seems to be just as confusing to Felix himself.

Maybe he has changed his opinion. Maybe he does - consider his trust betrayed or his privacy violated, perhaps. They both know that it is outside of Dimitri’s control - and Dimitri knows that Felix believes him when he says so - but to believe something with one’s conscious mind and to make peace with it viscerally are two things separated by an enormous chasm.

Or maybe he - still feels guilty. For all the times he has sunken his teeth into Dimitri to punish him for something he did not know the reason for.

Regardless of all that, Felix does have a point. Dimitri has noticed the effect of talking himself - it certainly would not hurt to investigate.

Dimitri ends up consulting Mercedes. She does not offer her own ear, and Dimitri does not ask her to: this job would not be fitting for a friend. 

She does, however, promise to find someone suitable and soon sends five candidates for Dimitri to choose from, their backgrounds heavily researched, their hearts sworn to privacy. 

Dimitri settles on two of them, both women: Ristana, who somehow reminds him of an elderly Mercedes, and Tethtain, younger but sharing her easy yet unobtrusive air of authority and competence - if Dimitri did not know any better, he would never guess that they do not actually listen to strangers talk about their problems for a living.

And that is what they do - listen. There are scribes in the room too, seated behind the screen and ready to take notes if something important comes up, but Ristana or Tethtain - whoever’s turn it is - only sit there in a chair a few paces away, and let Dimitri talk, and carefully bring him back when he gets lost and feels the crawling beginnings of panic.

Because Dimitri does get lost as he talks, trying to tell a thousand stories at once, jumping from one to the next as a new branching path catches his attention and demands to be spoken. He is gripped by a startling shame sometimes, at the newness, still, of talking about this, talking to  _ strangers,  _ but they do not offer him any judgement, they do not shatter into bewilderment or discomfort or disgust when he trips over his words. They just listen.

After some careful consideration, Ristana ventures a question - something innocuous, but rather to invite Dimitri to consider his words instead of just offering her usual gentle encouragement. And so a monologue becomes a dialogue, and soon after, Tethtain - they must be in contact, of course - does the same thing.

It is unknown territory, untraversed, difficult to figure out without any maps to speak of, but they keep talking. And even Mercedes comes by eventually and, prefacing it with reassurance that Dimitri’s privacy has been kept, shares with him that she considers further exploring possible benefits of - ‘guided conversation’, as she has decided to call it.

It quietens Dimitri’s mind, sands off the sharpest of the broken edges, soothes the jagged spaces in between.

But the nightmares often persist anyway. They will not be so easily made docile, not after their lifelong reign over Dimitri.

This time, the nightmare morphs into waking without a clear line in between, the twisting shadows hanging in the air like hooked meat, the stench stifling and in no hurry to clear.

The battle cries in unknown languages still echo in Dimitri’s ears.

His mess, his war, his curse. What good even is he, as a king? What can he do?

Beside him, Dimitri hears the telltale signs of Felix waking up: the sudden stillness when he first cracks his eyes open, the resuming breaths, the aborted shuffles as he checks the position of his limbs. Then, groggily, “I can hear you. Obsessing. Stop it.”

Dimitri sits up - no point in staying down if Felix is already awake. He looks at his scarred hands in his lap, shifts them uselessly against each other. “It’s hard,” he says and grimaces at the crack in his voice, rough with interrupted sleep. “Bad dreams.”

The bitter sense of urgency never leaves. The ghosts, once there, only get crueler.

Silence; too still to mean that Felix has gone back to sleep.

“I see too much - too many bad things happening,” Dimitri tries again. “It’s hard not to feel...inadequate.”

"Don't be stupid," Felix snaps, impatient.

Dimitri fights the ridiculous urge to hunch in on himself, made too fragile by the lingering tendrils of the nightmare.

"I mean..." Felix breaks the guilty silence - Dimitri can hear the wince in his voice, can hear him forcing himself to wake up properly. "Don't...just blindly assume the worst outcome. It won't help you prepare anyway, it'll just make you useless - I mean... _ ughhh,” _ his groan is muffled into the pillow.

Dimitri huffs a short laugh. There is something comforting about not being the only one who cannot think straight.

“We can never do anything against the worst possible scenario anyway, whether we know about it or not,” Felix tries again. “We should focus on things we  _ can _ deal with.”

“But what  _ can _ we do?” Dimitri shrugs, helpless. “I don't - I cannot…” If he gets up now, he might be able to continue their research, get an early start. What hour even is it?

“Right now, we can go the hell to sleep,” Felix interrupts his thoughts. “I know  _ I’m _ too tired to come up with anything.”

Dimitri frowns, his mind already halfway out of bed. “I - do not think I can sleep.”

“Then just lie down, at least.” The sound of the covers moving, then a pause. “Come.”

Felix drops his outstretched hand when Dimitri turns around, but keeps watching him between languid blinks until he lies down.

Dimitri shifts onto his side, lifts an arm with his eyebrows raised.

“Ugh. Alright. If we have to,” Felix grumbles, halfway to sleep, but he curls into Dimitri’s chest anyway, and when Dimitri wraps an arm around his shoulders, they do not stiffen.

Felix lets out a sigh that seems to pull all the remaining tension out of him, and on the exhale Dimitri holds him a little bit closer, nosing at the top of his head, breathing in the clean, comforting smell of him, and settles in to watch over the two of them for the rest of the night.

Fingers tighten in Dimitri’s nightshirt. A soft sound of lips parting. Then, mumbled into his chest, “It’s never just ‘a bad dream’ for you though, huh?”

Dimitri presses a close-mouthed kiss to Felix’s hair, stalling, though he does not know what for.

“Not always, no.”

“This entire time…” Felix trails off, but when Dimitri makes a questioning noise, he only shakes his head and tells him to try to sleep.

*

Weeks pass with no results. There is nothing that can win them the war. They even remember the Relics - but by now, no one would even be able to find their resting place, let alone retrieve them from its depths. Gautier has enough strength on its own to enforce Fódlani laws on Southern Sreng, but it will not hold off an all-out invasion.

In a stroke of inspiration, Dimitri suggests that they look to make peace before the war can boil over, and they look into delegations, into deals and espionage, but there are no negotiations to be done. Once the war starts brewing, Sreng will be too angry to listen.

Nothing works. Nothing.

Ingrid lets out a frustrated groan and rubs a hand over her forehead and through her disheveled hair.

“This is so useless,” she says, and something clenches in Dimitri’s chest. “I’m reading through this part again - uh, the Harpstring Moon, the Great Plains Summit - and there’s a  _ whole _ section on how to avoid turning it into another bloodshed, which would be really neat because then there’s no reason for uh - for the Horned Lord to poison the river, which then doesn’t lead to…I don’t recall what, but we’ve talked about that part before, I think…” She frowns, trying to remember. “Anyway, the summit thing would help us, and it lines up so neatly, but I just  _ can’t _ find what triggers it.” She sighs again, tired. 

They are all so tired. Their resolve is weakening - soon, they will accept what Dimitri already knows - that there is no winning this.

They will fight, of course. They will fight here, and then they will take up arms and continue the fight against the invasion. To die trying has long since been bred into the children of Faerghus, to stand strong until the very end and then some.

But Goddess, if only they did not have to.

“Wait - the Horned Lord, you said?” Sylvain shuffles his papers, eyes darting from one sheet to the next. “Is that the one - who was he - the brother of the lady who supplies half the lords with weapons?” He mutters something to himself and picks up a page, scanning its contents. “I didn’t connect it at first because Dimitri used Srengi names for them in my section, but now I’m thinking - the lady, Lady Faha? Uh,  _ fahirn, fahata _ \- ‘Bejeweled’?” He waits for a spark of recognition in Ingrid’s eyes, a quick nod. “She messes up and gives one of the lords, the old one, an untempered blade, and it shatters on his way to the summit.”

“But how does that - how does that help us?” Ingrid tilts her head.

“Because  _ then _ he counts it as a bad omen and doesn’t engage. Ah  _ ha, _ here he is,” Sylvain waves a page at them,  _ “Xoth, _ the Aspen Lord. And since he’s one of the key instigators…”

“They don’t end up fighting,” Felix finishes for him, and Sylvain nods with a grin. “Smart. What makes Faha mess up?”

“I had it here somewhere.” Sylvain digs around his papers again. There is a frenetic air to his movements now, a contagious sort of excitement. “It’s very rare, barely ever happens, so I didn’t really look into it but I think… Ah, here. If she doesn’t sleep the night before because her daughter gets lost fishing.”

“Why does she get lost?” Ingrid leans over impatiently to try to look at Sylvain’s papers.

“If it rains and the river floods, but it usually - I think it doesn’t usually happen.”

Ingrid sags back in her seat. “Oh. Well. Then there’s nothing we can do, right? We can’t influence the rain.”

They sit still for a second as the brief momentum fizzles out yet again. The narrow space between living and knowing one’s own mortality as surely as one might stare down the tip of another man’s lance is an odd, uncomfortable place to be. Dimitri knows it well - and now they have to, too.

Felix squints in contemplation at something over the hand covering the lower half of his face. “Unless it’s not about the rain,” he says. “I had a sequence here somewhere that would in theory take us all the way back to the Great Tree Moon, which I have previously disregarded, but if we can bridge the gap... Dimitri,” Felix’s eyes are suddenly on him, piercing, burning. “Is there anything else apart from the rain? Do you remember?”

What else can there be? If there  _ is, _ it has been washed out of Dimitri’s mind. “No. I have nothing.”

They have been here before. They have chased down leads only for the threads to dissolve into smoke in their hands. 

They have  _ been _ there, and it is frustrating and painful to feel hope every time anyway.

Felix looks undeterred. “Let me see. What if - hm. The sequence I mentioned - with a bit of tweaking, it ends with a part of the steppe dying out to disease - animals and plants. A very small part - right - here.” He gets up and walks over to the map on the wall, pointing at an area farther up north.

Sylvain turns to watch him. “Yeah, so?”

“Look closer - there’s a reservoir,” Felix taps a finger in that place. Dimitri does not see it from here in the murky candlelight, but something nudges at the back of his mind. “If it happens quickly enough, they panic and drain it before the disease spoils it.”

Ingrid raises an appreciative eyebrow. “And there you have your flood.”

“Alright,” Sylvain shrugs, awkward in his twisted position. “So what’s the tweaking then?”

Felix walks over and lowers himself back into his seat. “Let’s find out.”

They dive back in, invigorated again, hounds nosing at the scent; toss the thread back and forth among each other, tug inquisitively at where it unravels until they can tie the fibers back together.

The thread unspools backwards, day after day after day, the coil of it growing nearer, the pull of it heavier. It snakes across the steppe and the bogs and the forests and crawls up, and the air grows colder, and its imprint above the snowline on the Srengi side of the Rachta Mountains is an ominous ornament of frost on the windowpane. The papers cover the table in an even layer now, nobody bothering to stick to their own piles anymore.

Dimitri tries to help too, a nascent sliver of hope growing in him against all hopelessness. He does not remember, still - does not  _ see, _ but Felix’s notes are in front of him, and he can still read even if the effort to comprehend the words seems greater than it has any right to be. Dimitri feels slow and confused compared to his friends’ rapid to-and-fros, weighed down and stiff, but they pull him along regardless. And sometimes Dimitri catches these very brief moments when they glance at him and there is - something complicated, layered - disbelief and appreciation and awe, even.

Awe. Of him. Of what came spilling out of his cracked head. Awe.

The candles burn out before they notice. They replace them and keep working, too jittery to stop now. Even the idea of sleep flutters out of Dimitri’s grasp as soon as he thinks about it - when he gets a stray moment to think.

“Listen, no,  _ listen,” _ Sylvain waves his hands at them, raises his voice to talk over Felix. “The passage you’re talking about - it’s snowed in most of the year, true, but I’m  _ telling _ you - I’ve been there - it branches off into a tunnel through the bedrock for a short while, and that’s passable in any season!”

“I saw nothing about a secret tunnel,” Felix frowns, squinting down at the carpet of pages.

“No, it’s not - um. Dimitri - you must’ve missed it. But it’s just something I know, alright? It can’t  _ not _ factor in somehow, if the passage is so crucial to everything else happening.”

“Oh.” What else did he miss? Goddess, what else? “I apologize, I really thought it was everything…”

“You did spend, what was it, a whole week talking with barely any breaks?” Ingrid folds her hands on the table. The skin around her eyes is tight with exhaustion. “And judging by how it went, I’d say it’s to be expected that a thing or two got lost somewhere. Doesn’t mean it’s not there or that we can’t find it, we just need to cross-check.”

“Mhm, what Ingrid said.” Sylvain shows them two pages, one in each hand. “And look, the one I was talking about has been rewritten - and I’ll know this scrawl anywhere, Goddess knows I’ve tried to cheat off of Felix plenty of times. He probably just forgot or something.”

“Oh shut it, Sylvain, you could do your own damn homework.” Felix briefly crosses his arms but uncrosses them with a sigh and straightens up in his seat again. “Let’s find what can possibly lead to that passage from the other side, then we’ll see where they cross each other.”

There is a game that Dimitri could never play himself but sometimes observed others play. A game where the player has to arrange small flat stones on their side in neat rows - sometimes spelling out a word or maybe outlining a picture, as intricate or as simple as they desire. A slow and painstaking task that can take them hours, days, maybe even weeks depending on the complexity and the number of stones.

And then, once everything is arranged, the player touches the first stone, and it all comes crashing down, each individual fall triggering the next one until the wave reaches the end and not a single stone is left standing.

The candles burn out again. It must be nearing morning - but the drapes are drawn, and Dimitri does not know. His body feels too heavy to get up and check.

“They don’t give it away by accident if the man doesn’t offer to trade,” Felix says, marking something on the page he is holding.

Sylvain continues without a pause, picking up the thought. “Which won’t happen if they don’t come across the Srengi camp in the snow and he isn’t desperate enough to do it…”

“...Because the horse breaks a leg, yes,” Ingrid blows impatiently at a strand of hair falling in her face. “Which it always does unless…”

“Unless they take the right turn instead of getting lost on the slope,” Felix finishes. 

“Exactly!” Sylvain rifles through his papers, suddenly adrift. “And  _ that  _ can be avoided, uh, if...if…”

That can be avoided if…

Dimitri closes his eye. Opens it.

“If Sylvain warns the border patrol not to go out until the storm passes,” he says.

A breath, held, and the last - the  _ first _ stone is slid into place. 

A beat of stillness. The silence roars in Dimitri’s ears.

“Huh,” Sylvain says. Leans carefully back, stretches his arms out like a quartered man until the joints pop. Lowers them back, still careful. Tastes the words before speaking them. “Ladies and gentlemen. There is no war with Sreng.”

Dimitri quickly shakes his head, trying to dislodge the precarious feeling. “No. Wait,” he pushes through the roaring. His hands grip the edge of the table as he looks over it - when did he get up? “Wait, this cannot be. We need to check it again - please, let us check it again.”

They check again. And again. And again.

The path is clear. They found it.

There is no war with Sreng. 

Dimitri leans heavily on the table when his knees buckle, as if all these weeks of exhausting, anxious work and poor sleep finally catch up to him all at once. Somebody laughs - relieved, a little crazed.

“You saw it,” Felix says, and his voice is a line pulling Dimitri back to the shore, and he turns his head until he comes into view. Felix lifts a hand and presses the pad of his thumb firmly - gently - against Dimitri’s forehead, his fingers splaying out to cradle his temple. He lets it fall away in the next second, but the touch lingers, cool against the flames under Dimitri’s skin. “In  _ there. _ You saw it.”

“I didn’t. It didn’t make any sense, it never does…”

“Of course you did!” Sylvain laughs from across the table; he has gotten up as well. “Just needed a little help making sense of it. Hey - what’s with the faces? We figured it out - there’s no war with Sreng! Ingrid,” he grabs her in a tight hold, lifting her clean out of the chair, spins and laughs as she shrieks in surprise, “there’s no war with Sreng!”

They made it. They made it?!

“Get over here, you two,” Sylvain crashes into Dimitri, Ingrid still pressed against his side, and then Felix is pulled in as well, and the four of them huddle together, reeling but kept standing in each other’s arms. 

Somebody stutters out a sigh, somebody else laughs in agreement, the embrace tightens, and then there is only the sound of breathing and the shifting of fabric, the warm press of bodies through it. Dimitri’s forehead is resting against Sylvain’s temple where he’s crammed them both against each other, and Felix’s hair is trying to make home in his mouth where he is squeezed between them and into Dimitri’s chest, and Ingrid keeps shifting, restless even now, and they are here. They are here, and the world is not ending, not just yet.

Not just yet.

*

Sylvain rides off to Gautier two weeks later, preferring to weather the winter there and ensure that he will be in the right place at the right time to warn the patrol.

With his departure, the first stone shudders and falls, knocking over the next.

*

“We can’t leave it at that, though. Otherwise we’ll spend our entire lives looking over our shoulders.”

Dimitri and Felix are in Mother’s garden again - the runes keep the soil supple and warm despite the winter frost hanging in the air in icy particles, and Dimitri - Dimitri needs to be here. Can afford it now, too, since the nightmare has been beaten back from their doorstep.

“I know,” he says. He has been thinking of little else in the past few days. It is never that simple. “But Sylvain is quite enthusiastic about fixing our relationship with them - and this will buy us time and space to open negotiations. Start with giving the Southern Sreng back to them, for example.”

A snort from where Felix is leaning against the trunk of a camphor tree behind Dimitri’s back, and he imagines the puff of steam framing his face from it. “Chipping away at Fódlan again, are you?”

Dimitri smiles down at the poppies, runs a hand through the firelicks. “Only returning what does not belong to it.”

Father has been furious ever since Dimitri started thinking about this. It was his biggest campaign, after all - his only real military campaign. But that does not make it right, and if they want to have a chance at a peaceful future between their two continents, the choice is obvious.

Felix looks off again when Dimitri throws a glance at him over his shoulder. Something has been brewing in Felix lately, a slowly building crescendo, and Dimitri initially wrote it off as their ceaseless work on the Sreng issue, it does not seem to have gotten better afterwards. If anything, it feels worse, like Sreng was a protective shield that Felix was holding up against something, and now it is gone, leaving Felix out in the open.

And Dimitri - well, Dimitri is tired of this. One would think that they have grown enough by now.

He gets up slowly, makes a show of wiping and taking off his gardening gloves, folding them carefully to put away in the pocket of his jacket. The ground, covered with crawling greenery and specks of colour, suddenly feels very far away.

“You truly do not have to concern yourself with any of this,” he begins. “I understand that it is probably difficult to reconcile, but I do wish you would just talk to me about it.”

A bewildered pause. “About what?”

Dimitri turns around, and yes - Felix’s face betrays his emotions simply by being too emotionless. “I could not help but notice that you have been more…” Affectionate? Attentive? That is only half the story, though. “Accommodating than usual, and one cannot fail to see the connection between that and my...confession.”

“Your confession,” Felix drops, his eyes very wide and very deliberately looking past Dimitri.

“Yes, about my - ability.” How should Dimitri put it? Only as he sees it, it would seem. “If you still feel responsible for what has transpired between us throughout the years - I have forgiven you. I - hoped that my actions already spoke enough. I would really rather it stayed in the past where it belongs.” He has learned that lesson well enough.

“Wait.” Felix’s now narrowed eyes flit to him - and away. “You think I - treat you the way I do - out of guilt?”

But if he does not, then...

There it is. The other half - the times when Felix stays away even when he is close and seems to look right through Dimitri. Why?

Oh dear - all the desires that Dimitri cannot always discern from actual visions, all the images that beckoned to him in the past, when in truth Felix was nothing but thorns to him at the time - Felix has heard all of it,  _ read _ all of it, has he not? And, oh Goddess, has Dimitri not said all of it out loud to the scribes? Have Sylvain and Ingrid not read it along with Felix, have they not witnessed Dimitri’s unwanted affections for him?

But no, one moment - Felix did take it upon himself to sort through the records. Only the information relevant to Sreng ended up in that study. Felix kept the rest for himself, so that nobody could see all the - oh, how shameful.

“You know, by now, that not everything I see is actually true,” Dimitri says, desperately projecting the calm he does not feel. “There is a certain level of - fears, and guilt, and wishful thinking involved, at times, and I...I have spent quite a number of years missing your company, Felix. Those records - they make it evident, I’m sure.”

“Wishful thinking…” Felix muses. “Do you mean - all those realities where I was…” His face is contorted, uncomfortable, unforgiving, and Dimitri does not need his ability to know what Felix is locking behind grit teeth, but he hears it anyway.

_ ‘Kinder. Gentler. More patient.’ _

“Like I said. Not actual realities, just what I - selfishly wished for.” He is wading into unknown waters now, that much is obvious. But the tug of the current is strong and heady, and really, what is one more catharsis? They have just brought forth the unmaking of a war. “And I am sorry that other people had to hear it, and write it down, and read it. If I could have controlled myself at all as I was talking - if I could have held anything back - I promise to you, I would have done so.”

“Wishful thinking,” Felix repeats again, incredulous - wondering?

_ “Yes, _ as I am telling you, because I…” Dimitri is agitated now, stretched thin - why is Felix so calm when he makes him feel the way he always does, unsteady and  _ exposed, _ though it no longer rings with half-forgotten misery? “Do not be cruel to me, Felix, not in this.”

Dimitri has made his peace with it - he believes it so, at least - but yet again he is laid bare before him, and this time there is truly nothing at all left to hide. This time, Felix has looked into his very head, Dimitri’s every cry of yearning  _ literally _ spelled out for him to see.

Why is Felix still here? This is not what he wanted, he made  _ that _ clearer than anything. So what does he want instead? What more could he ask of him?

“Dimitri…” Felix finally speaks and shakes his head. “You fool. How can you see everything and still be so blind?”

But it lacks the serrated edge of an accusation. Instead it sounds - how does it sound?

“What do you mean?”

Felix rolls his eyes, pushes himself away from the tree in one smooth motion, takes a step forward. “It wasn’t just wishful thinking.”

And then Felix closes the distance between them and kisses him, and oh Goddess, his lips are  _ so cold, _ but so are Dimitri’s, and Felix lets out a startled noise when Dimitri brushes his nose against his cheek, but it really  _ is  _ freezing here, outside - the runes only care to keep the ground warm.

Dimitri feels a pull around the back of his neck when Felix tugs down on the lapels of his open jacket, bringing him closer - as if there were any risk of him leaning away, and the kiss deepens, sealing their warmth against the chilled air, and Felix’s every motion is careful and deliberate the way he never is outside of doing the things he loves, like sparring or arguing or - or.

And then Felix breaks away but he is still pulling on the lapels and so Dimitri nearly stumbles back into him, but one of the hands shifts to brace against his chest, halting the sudden movement. Dimitri’s wet lips tingle from the cold.

When Dimitri opens his eye, Felix looks - very red, and not just from the frost. There is a rueful look to him, something wry and sweetly pained that Dimitri does not think he has ever seen on him before.

“You want me to spell it out?” Felix says, his teeth bared, and ploughs on before Dimitri can respond. “It wasn’t...Maybe they  _ were _ real, those visions. Maybe I just couldn’t - bring myself to act on what I wanted.”

He falls silent again and looks away, but his fingers are tapping restlessly against Dimitri’s lapel, against his chest.

But that means - that must surely mean…

But Dimitri needs to ask something else first, before he can even think about  _ that. _ He needs to know. Felix is completely red by now, the expression on his face shifting into something another person might confuse for fury, but the almost frenzied agitation in him will not let Dimitri rest. “Does it truly not disturb you? My knowledge?”

Felix snorts and turns his face towards Dimitri again, but his eyes are fixed on his splayed hand. “I’ve listened to you talk and I spent  _ ages _ deciphering the absolute  _ mess _ of the transcripts. I think it's safe to say you lose the trees in the forest with such an onslaught of information.” He tilts his head, considering something, and a smirk tugs at his mouth. “No. I don’t think I’m afraid of you - seeing things. About me. You did it for years and never figured anything out. I think I’m safe.”

So Felix - is not afraid. Felix is not guilty. Felix is…

A belated rush of warmth hits Dimitri like the tide. He said he  _ wanted _ to act on those impulses - and he is still here, now, talking about it - does that mean…?

“But if you wanted to - then why did you - why all this?” Dimitri gestures between them, smacks his hand accidentally against Felix’s, making it shift in the fabric of his shirt, against his chest. “Why did you never want to talk about it?”

Felix huffs, rolls his eyes again. “When have I  _ ever  _ wanted to talk about anything? Besides - you would  _ have  _ to marry, eventually. I couldn’t allow myself to…” His mouth presses into a bowed line for a moment. “And then you kept insisting that you wouldn’t, and disregarded the Crest inheritance to boot, you  _ massive  _ oaf…I don’t know!” Felix snaps, suddenly disgruntled, and colours again. “I got confused. Don’t ask me.”

Dimitri lets out a startled laugh, then another, then gives in to it, throwing his head back, the cold air cooling his throat on every gasp. His arms are secure around Felix - when has he put them there? - and he brings him closer, and the garden shivers and sighs around them as he laughs and Felix groans at him to cease through his own suppressed laughter.

"I love you,” Dimitri breathes out, looking down, blinking away the freezing tears. He might be an oaf, but in that case Felix is nothing but his matching pair. “I - I love you, Felix."

"I know," Felix finally laughs as well, helpless and all the more indignant for it, leans forward to hide his face against Dimitri's collarbone. His shoulders shake. "I  _ know. _ I was made - very aware of the fact.”

The rest of Felix’s response is hopelessly muffled into Dimitri’s shirt, but he knows it, too. He knows. All of Felix’s silhouettes echo the same thing.


	19. Epilogue

_ nothing will be left of us -  _

_ if we are lucky, we might keep our selves _

  
  


_ (This is an introductory excerpt from Chapter 2 of “The Realm That Lasted A Lifetime: A Complete History of The United Kingdom of Fódlan” by Sekh T. Faluc. To view the full text, please scan your library card and follow the instructions that appear on the touchscreen.) _

**Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd** was the first king of  **the United Kingdom of Fódlan** , crowned as Dimitri I in 1186 after the War of Unification (1180-1186), preceded by his father, Lambert II (1136-1176). He was born on the 20th of the Ethereal Moon in 1162 in Fhirdiad, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, and died on the 27th of the Horsebow Moon in 1241 in Fhirdiad, the United Kingdom of Fódlan.

Dimitri I spent a significant part of his rule recovering the continent’s economy in the wake of the war, determined at the same time to introduce notable changes into the systems of government, agriculture, education, healthcare, social welfare, and many others, some of which proved to be crucial to the development of Fódlan as we know it today. **[1]**

He abdicated in 1223 before he could see all the seeds he had planted come to fruition, but he still had enough time to lay the groundwork for the truly significant changes implemented later by his adoptive son and heir, Aliir (1185-1268, crowned Aliir I in 1223, from 1254 Archminister Aliir Glenn Blaiddyd of the Fódlan Federation). **[2]**

Dimitri I’s prominent skill to defuse and even prevent conflicts both within the country and in international politics was a subject of curiosity and admiration already in his time. Today, we have records of his contemporaries describing how the King displayed such wisdom in his conduct with his subjects, it was as if he “would look upon the Suplicante _ [sic] _ and know in that same instant what they [needed] in order to thrive”. **[3]** His rule is universally referred to as one of the most peaceful periods in the history of Fódlan despite the early post-war era and the King’s insistence on implementing changes that many considered drastic. 

Dimitri I’s relatively early abdication and the few accounts on the topic that reached us lend sufficient credibility to the theory that for most of his early life and a significant number of years into his rule, he has suffered from severe depression and a case of PTSD, likely as a consequence of surviving in the Tragedy of Duscur (1176). It is safe to assume that it was his awareness of mental health issues, though he obviously lacked the knowledge and vocabulary we possess today, that eventually led to the founding of Home of Compassion in 1190, directed by Mercedes von Martritz (1157-1253), which is known today as the oldest mental health institution in Fódlan, recognized worldwide for its achievements in the field. 

Dimitri I took Felix Hugo Fraldarius (1162-1243) as his Royal Consort in 1188; they stayed married until the King’s death in 1241. Fraldarius became the Royal Advisor immediately following the end of the war and inherited his father’s dukedom in 1200, though he gave up both titles in 1223 in favour of his uncle’s granddaughter, Magrida Niette Fraldarius (1187-1257). His and Dimitri I’s tombs are placed next to each other and can be observed today in the Blaiddyd Crypt in Fhirdiad. **[4]**

****

______

**[1]** See:  _ Policies on Relics and Crests in post-WoU Fódlan _ by Nart Moscossi (2001),  _ The Blaiddyd Revolution _ by Sandro and Fierte Mah (2008),  _ Common Courtesy: The Double Council _ by Kira Blayney (2011),  _ The Long Road to Independence: Duscur _ by Fu Rudaru (2013).

**[2]** See: contemporary manuscript on Aliir G. Blaiddyd by Sybil D. Gaspard (1259).

**[3]** _Saviour King_ by Maggie C. Rowan, (2020), p. 377.

**[4]** See: contemporary manuscript on Felix H. Fraldarius by Sybil D. Gaspard (1248).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are! Thank you so very much for reading, the fact that you even made it here is astounding xD Prophetmitri was a blast to write and I am very glad to have shared it with you.
> 
> Also: this is your last chance to let me know how you've liked it ;) I appreciate every kudo, subscription, and bookmark, and comments always have a very special place in my heart <3
> 
> My twitter is [@royalcorvids](https://twitter.com/royalcorvids).


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